Productivity Growth in U.S. Agriculture: A Postwar Perspective

There has been a long-standing fascination with productivity trends in U.S. agriculture. In part, this stems from the historical importance of agriculture to the economy but it also reflects economists' early and continued interest in quantifying the rate of return to society's sizable investment in agricultural R&D. The sum of government sponsored and private sector R&D investment in agriculture is estimated to have been $268 million in 1953.' In that year, total R&D investment in the economy from all sources amounted to $5.1 billion.2 Excluding defense and space-related R&D which accounted for approximately half of the U.S. total in the early fifties,3 R&D expenditures dedicated to agriculture equaled approximately 10% of total U.S. investment in R&D from all sources.