US Private Ag R&D Shifts Toward State-Level Dispersion
New patent-based data reveals that private agricultural innovation is highly persistent and closely tied to the size of state agricultural economies.
Private sector agricultural R&D in the US is deeply anchored in the scale of a state's existing agricultural economy. A new dataset covering 1976 to 2014 shows that R&D investment correlates strongly with the size of the local agricultural sector, both across different states and over time.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.04956
The research establishes these trends by allocating national private R&D across 50 states based on the geographic distribution of inventors listed on patents across five key agricultural subsectors. This methodology captures a large majority of total private sector agricultural R&D, providing a granular view of where innovation actually happens.
Innovation patterns in this sector are highly persistent, meaning states with established R&D hubs tend to keep them. However, the geographic concentration of this activity declined between 1976 and 2014, suggesting a period where innovation spread more broadly across the US.
Recent data indicates this trend toward dispersion may be reversing. The shift back toward concentration suggests that agricultural innovation is once again clustering in specific geographic strongholds.