Innovation in the Agricultural and Food System
Over the past century, technological innovation has fundamentally reshaped US agriculture. Total output in this sector has increased manyfold even as labor use has declined dramatically. This remarkable productivity growth was sustained by mechanization, improvements in plant and animal genetics, expanded use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and advances in farm management practices. Modern production agriculture is increasingly connected to upstream input industries, downstream processing and retailing, data and financial services, and global supply chains. This agricultural and food system continues to create opportunities for innovation while also raising questions about incentives, market structure, technology adoption, risk, regulation, and the distribution of benefits.
As society confronts the challenge of feeding a growing world population in an increasingly uncertain environment, it is essential to understand the economics of innovation throughout the agricultural and food system. What determines the direction and pace of innovation? How do new technologies diffuse across producers, firms, and regions? How do institutions and public policies shape innovation incentives? Who benefits from technological change, and what economic, environmental, or social tradeoffs does it create?
To promote research on innovation in the agricultural and food system, the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), with the support of the Economic Research Service at the US Department of Agriculture, will convene a research conference in Washington, DC on Friday, May 21, 2027. The conference will be organized by GianCarlo Moschini (Iowa State University) and Paul Rhode (University of Michigan).
The organizers invite submissions of original economic research on innovation in the agricultural and food system. Potential topics include, but are not limited to:
- Institutions and incentives: public and private R&D, intellectual property, research partnerships, knowledge spillovers and complementarities, and regulatory institutions and approval processes.
- Markets and industrial organization: competition, market power, and investments in R&D; contracting and vertical integration; and value creation and distribution along the supply chain.
- Adoption and diffusion: adoption incentives and constraints; learning and information; heterogeneity among farms and firms, and the role of scale economies; and technology transfer.
- Emerging technologies and applications: biotechnology; digital and precision agriculture; automation, robotics, and artificial intelligence; data ownership and governance, interoperability, and cybersecurity; and traceability and certification.
- Productivity, resilience, and societal impacts: productivity measurement and returns to R&D, environmental and health impacts, consumer acceptance, labor market effects, distribution of welfare gains, and historical lessons regarding technological displacement and resistance to change.
The organizers will consider submissions of complete, or nearly complete, papers that will be ready to present by May 2027. They welcome empirical and theoretical research, as well as papers by scholars who are early in their careers and who are not NBER affiliates. If any members of the research team have ties to the agricultural industry or other potential conflicts of interest, those ties should be disclosed on the first page of the submission.
To be considered for inclusion on the program, papers must be uploaded by 11:59pm EDT on Tuesday, February 15, 2027 via the following link:
Please feel free to share this call for papers widely with any researchers who might be working on projects that are suitable for presentation. Please do not submit papers that have been accepted for publication and will be published by May 2027 and be aware that NBER papers may not make policy recommendations or offer normative judgements on policy. Authors chosen to present papers will be notified in early March 2027. The NBER will cover hotel and economy-class conference travel for up to two authors per paper. Questions about this conference may be addressed to confer@nber.org.