Module 2 - Competitive Research Funds

Competitive research funds are being introduced in many countries for financing agricultural research in ways that mobilize available research capacity, stimulate scientific creativity, and promote efficiencies in the research system. Competitive research funds can be an effective mechanism for allocating resources for agricultural research and can drive reform of the overall research system. High-quality review, administrative efficiency, and transparent processes are essential to program credibility, but most programs have yet to develop sustainability strategies.

Many countries are seeking to reform national agricultural research systems that have become unproductive owing to insufficient operating funds, incentives, and flexibility. Competitive research funds are financing mechanisms that can marshal available scientists for work on key problems, develop institutional linkages and research capacities across organizations, and link scientists with users of new technologies.

Competitive Research Grants Programs

In competitive research grants programs (CRGPs), research providers are selected on a competitive basis, using calls for proposals and scientific peer review to allocate funding. CRGPs are often linked to the establishment of an agricultural research fund, which is open to a variety of potential contributors who may wish to finance specific research or technology transfer activities through the fund. CRGPs complement “core” funding or “block” grant funding, in funds are allocated annually to specified public research organizations for their core research programs, infrastructure, and human resources.

Benefits

CRGPs are flexible and can be used to accomplish objectives that are difficult to achieve through block funding. CRGPs can restrict funding to specific research topics (for example, rice); types of research (for example, adaptive on-farm research); projects requiring collaboration between organizations or with farmers; or research within a specific region or discipline (box 2.7). Their flexibility makes CRGPs a useful tool in building national agricultural research systems, as they can:

• Mobilize the best available scientists, including those in universities and the private sector, for work on specific high-priority projects.
  
  
• Develop a pluralistic research system by providing operating costs to better utilize available human and physical infrastructure from a wide range of institutions.
  
  
• Promote research partnerships and collaboration between different organizations, disciplines, or countries.
  
  
• Make research more demand-driven by involving clients in setting priorities and financing, executing, and evaluating research.
  
  
• Increase total research funding by mobilizing funds from farmers, industry, and other sources.
  
  
• Improve research quality and innovation by selecting projects based on rigorous technical review of scientific merit, sound work-plan, and expected results.