Review of Sask Wheat Levy and Opportunistic Investments

Term: 1 years, beginning in 2021

Status: Ongoing

Funding Amount: $59,570

Lead Researcher(s): Dr. Richard Gray (University of Saskatchewan)

Funding Partners: N/A

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Project Description

There is a large amount of economic literature that examines return to investments in public agricultural research in breeding. The predominance of evidence suggests the rate to return to public agricultural research is persistently high across a large number of agricultural subsectors, jurisdictions, and time periods. In Western Canada, there are several studies, including those we have been involved with, that show very high internal rates of return of investments in agricultural applied research and breeding. These returns are easily verified with simple calculations looking at the gross annual research benefit and weighted average increases over time. Agricultural producers have clearly reaped large benefits from public investment in research, and producer led investments by WGRF, and commodity commissions. There is no indication these high rates of return diminished or that these investments have been unwarranted. That being said, Sask Wheat now finds itself in a position of not being able to find opportunities to invest their check off monies at a rate fast enough to keep up with the inflow of levy funds. This situation is somewhat paradoxical; the high rates of return experienced and current investments would suggest there should be more opportunities to invest levies to earn a high rate of return, yet these opportunities to invest more have not presented themselves to Sask Wheat. Given this, the first three deliverables are important for this project and they are very much interconnected.