Authors:
Kathleen Flaherty, Sandra Perez, Norman Gibson, and Kistian Flemming
Year:
2015
Publisher
International Food Policy Research Institute and Caribbean Agricultural Research and Development Institute.
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As of 2012, most Anglophone Caribbean countries employed fewer than 10 agricultural FTE researchers and spent less than $2 million PPP dollars on agricultural R&D (in constant 2011 prices). Agricultural research in the region is primarily conducted in Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago and by the regional agency CARDI.
Average agricultural R&D spending as a share of agricultural GDP is relatively high in the region but actually reflects the small scale of the countries’ agricultural sectors; this is a common phenomenon in small countries, where higher shares of total funding are required to establish and maintain basic research infrastructure and staffing due to the inability to achieve economies of scale.
In general, government allocations to agricultural R&D are quite limited in most of the region’s countries due to the global financial crisis, the occurrence of natural disasters, and the end of preferential trade agreements, among other challenges. Consequently, agricultural R&D agencies have relied on external donor resources—which tend to follow volatile trends over time—to fund research activities.