The CGIAR at 31 : an independent meta-evaluation of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research - global public goods from the CGIAR - impact assessment

Attempts to estimate the returns to research on crop varietal improvement have generated a huge body of benefit-cost and rate-of-return studies. Studies are practically unanimous in finding returns well above the returns attainable from alternative uses of public funds. While the studies can legitimately be criticized on several grounds, they provide convincing evidence that, taken as a whole, the crop-breeding CGIAR Centers have generated extraordinarily high returns to investment. The present paper is primarily devoted to a review of the findings of such studies, principally by economists and other social scientists who have attempted to quantify the consequences of agricultural research. It particularly focuses on estimating the economic value of what has been accomplished by the CGIAR, how confident we can be in those estimates, and what the implications are for future investment in the CGIAR System.