The impact of agricultural research and development on the GDP of EU member states

Szűcs, István – Mohamed, Zsuzsanna – Takács, Szabolcs

Keywords: research and development, agro-economy, GDP, impacts

Based on our graphs, the following summarising conclusions were arrived to:
- ‘C-D’ graphs are suitable for assessing the approximate impact of the production factors we examined.
- In 2000, it was agricultural assets, while in 2007 it was agriculture workforce that played a greater role in the generation of agro-GDP. This mainly reflected the significant improvement of the technical standards of the workforce during that period. They had accumulated skills, and their importance as a factor of production grew.
- The share of agricultural R+D in GDP was around 11% in 2000 and 14% in 2007. Consequently, development efforts are significant for the development of agro-economy.
Using the modifies production graphs, we found that in the EU Member States, both in 2000 and in 2008,
- higher R+D spending per capita is associated  at a very strong positive correlation – with significantly higher GDP/capita (r squared was 0.94 in 2000 and 0.67 in 2007), while higher agricultural R+D spending per capita is associated with definitely higher levels of agro-GDP (r square was 0.58 in 2000 and 0.76 in 2007);
- increasing agricultural R+D / hectare is associated with increased agro-GDP / hectare; therefore increasing the intensity of research and development in agriculture is key to the agricultural economy (r square was 0.84 in 2000 and 0.63 in 2007).
The number of biotechnology patents / hectare and the value of agro-GDP / hectare show definite, strong correlation, indicating that the role of biotechnology in the growth of agro-economy is far from insignificant.
Our earlier research had demonstrated that the relationship between R+D activity and GDP goes both ways, as the wealthier a nation, the more it can spend on intensifying research. This also means that less developed countries have a poor chance of catching up.

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