The Roots of Agricultural Innovation: Patent Evidence of Knowledge Spillovers

Abstract

This chapter investigates the extent to which agricultural innovations draws on ideas originating outside of agriculture. We identify a large set of US patents for agricultural technologies granted between 1976 and 2018. To measure knowledge spillovers to these patents, we rely on three proxies: patent citations to other patents, patent citations to the scientific literature, and a novel text analysis to identify and track new ideas in the patent text. We find that more than half of knowledge flows originate outside of agriculture. The majority of these knowledge inflows, however, still originate in domains that are close to agriculture.

AgriLOVE: Agriculture, land-use and technical change in an evolutionary, agent-based model

“…The diffusion of knowledge spillovers is crucial in agriculture (Evenson, 2000;Clancy et al, 2020). Such process is heavily affected by geographical closeness, both through imitation and within-firm learning activities, (Section 3.2), as acquisitions of cells are more likely to happen among neighboring farms (Equation 19).…”

AgriLOVE: agriculture, land-use and technical change in an evolutionary, agent-based model

“…The diffusion of knowledge spillovers is crucial in agriculture (Evenson, 2000;Clancy et al, 2020). Such process is heavily affected by geographical closeness, both through imitation and within-firm learning activities, (Section 3.2), as acquisitions of cells are more likely to happen among neighboring farms (Equation 19).…”

Innovation, Growth and Structural Change in American Agriculture

“…These shifts in the global landscape for food and agricultural R&D also paralleled broader changes in the world's economic geography and the country composition of global GERD. In 1980, the for U.S. agriculture (see, e.g., Clancy et al 2020). However, space matters more for agriculture, and many agricultural innovations are site-specific.…”

“…Meanwhile, the U.S. government first slowed and then of late scaled back public support for agricultural R&D. Where in the rest-of-the-world agricultural R&D takes place matters as much as the amount and types of research conducted in the United States for the innovative future of U.S. agriculture. Just as genetic innovations conceived in the health sector have benefited agriculture (and vice versa), rest-of-world agricultural knowledge stocks have spatial spillover consequences for U.S. agriculture (see, e.g., Clancy et al 2020). However, space matters more for agriculture, and many agricultural innovations are site-specific.…”