Authors:
COSTA RICA Sandra Perez, Enrique Martinez, Nienke Beintema, and Kathleen Flaherty
Year:
2015
Publisher
International Food Policy Research Institute and National Institute of Agricultural Innovation and Technology Transfer.
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Costa Rica has the largest and most advanced agricultural research system in Central America; government agencies predominate, supplemented by strong—and growing— higher education and nonprofit sectors.
Costa Rica invests more than its neighbors in the region, spending slightly more than 1 percent of its AgGDP on agricultural R&D (equal to 0.06 percent when compared to the country’s total GDP). However, spending levels fell during 2009–2012 and have most likely continued to fall since then.
The national number of agricultural researcher fell during 2009–2012 due to a sharp decline in the number of researchers employed at INTA, the country’s main agricultural research agency. As a result, by 2012 the higher education sector employed twice as many agricultural researchers as INTA.