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Summary of full report
Evaluation of the Rice Program: An assessment of investment returns — Stage 2
by the Centre for International Economics
June 2004
RIRDC Publication No 04/94
Foreword
The evaluation of the rice research portfolio is a part of a broader program of research outcome evaluations undertaken by RIRDC. There have been five evaluations to date covering all four of the RIRDC program areas, and in 2002 the agroforestry sub-program. These evaluations are undertaken to provide information on the return that RIRDC is achieving on levy payer and taxpayer funding of agricultural R&D. They also provide valuable information on performance at the program and project level and feed back into the development of priorities for future research. Lessons from the evaluations aid the understanding of the role of R&D in delivering productivity improvements in agricultural industries and in enhancing the sustainability of these industries.The first phase of the evaluation of the rice program presents a summary of all research projects undertaken, classifies the research by the broad area of impact and assesses each project against broad triple bottom line impact categories. This second phase report presents detailed benefit cost analysis evaluations of a sample of research clusters to determine what value has been delivered to the rice industry through RIRDC funded research. The evaluations in this report cover a sample of rice research clusters sourced from the ten years of RIRDC research in the rice sector between 1991 and 2002 with a total cost of $16 million, or roughly 17 per cent of the RIRDC rice program.
The benefit-cost results demonstrate very good returns on the R&D investment in the rice industry.
For each dollar invested by RIRDC and it’s research partners the returns range from $9 to $99 dollars.
The majority of these benefits accrue to rice producers, but the evaluations indicate significant gains from improvement in water use efficiency. This has off-farm environmental benefits as well as onfarm benefits. However, natural variability and a lack of baseline information on the level and salinity of water tables makes it difficult to measure improvements in these areas. In addition, attribution of any changes to specific R&D outputs is not clear given the substantial impact of policy changes such as the introduction of the Water Management Plans. Other environmental benefits largely reflect a reduction in risk of environmental damage, which was thought to be small. Regardless of the magnitudes of the initial risk, such outcomes have considerable social value to rice farmers and the community. This value forms one of the triple bottom line benefits of the R&D investment, although no measures are currently available to reflect the scale of this benefit.
Simon Hearn
Managing Director
Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation
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