Nathan Lane (@nathanlane.bsky.social)

Public R&D and Brazil’s agricultural revolution It is often argued that returns to R&D are low in developing countries, making imported technologies a better path to growth. Yet technologies designed for frontier nations may not fit local conditions, limiting their productivity gains. This column studies Brazil’s Embrapa, a large public R&D effort to create agricultural innovation suited to Brazil’s ecology. Embrapa shifted research toward local needs and raised agricultural productivity by 110%, far outweighing its costs. Sustained, locally targeted R&D can be a key part of development policy. https://ow.ly/ao5150XqXb1