Focusing on agricultural biotechnology scientists brings with it a number of advantages

For these commodities, the Domestic and Full changes from reference are therefore most similar. Indeed for Corn in particular, the inclusion of even spatially heterogenous, direction varying impacts across the entire world versus only in the U.S. makes very little difference in the physical output variables of GCAM considered: area, production, and endogenous yield. It is primarily in price that a difference between Domestic and Full is detectable for a given climate-crop impact combination. For commodities such as Wheat and Rice, shown in Fig 3, for which production is more spatially distributed globally, a shock to U.S. production is a smaller change in the scope of the full global system. Therefore for commodities such as these, the inclusion of impacts globally can lead to a reversal in the direction of changes relative to the Domestic case, particularly for production and/or revenue. For Wheat, reversals in the direction of revenue change occur in three of ten spatially heterogenous agricultural impacts scenarios driven by structurally different crop models, across a range of GCM drivers; for Rice, in five of ten. This suggests that the reversal in the direction of change when impacts are applied globally is emergent from the international dynamics themselves and not an artifact of the scenarios considered. These findings are again consistent with other models in the literature,indoor vertical farming and adds an additional regionally resolved, global-scale multi-sector economic model’s results to confirm the importance of examining global systems holistically, as conclusions may fundamentally change for several commodities when only domestic impacts are considered.

Figs 2 and 3 highlight that different changes from reference in the area allocated to individual commodities occur when impacts are applied in the Domestic versus Full scenario. For a more aggregated investigation of area allocation, Table 1 summarizes the change in landcover for total cropland, as well as changes from reference in the GCAM ‘other arable land’ type, forest, and grassland cover. Recall that impacts were not applied to forest or grassland in any of the scenarios under consideration, and so these area changes are strictly emergent from the changes in cropland as areas move into or out of agricultural crop production. The changes in forest and grassland are generally small, as GCAM features an explicit other arable land type in the crop competition logit nest . In the system modeled byGCAM, this land type is often the first and most impacted by cropland area changes. An exception is the HadGEM2-EPIC scenario: cropland areas decrease to such an extent that both other arable land and forest expand. The changes in total cropland area in the EPIC scenarios reported in Table 1 are generally smaller in magnitude than those reported. While GCAM’s simulations run through 2100, results are presented in 2050 for ready comparison with other results in the literature. S4 and S5 Figs present the 2100 data for the same variables as Figs 2 and 3 and S3 Fig; the relationships between the Domestic and Full scenarios that occur for each climate-crop combination observed above for 2050 data persist in 2100. The persistence of the relationships between Domestic and Full scenarios across time and across spatially heterogenous, varied climate-crop combinations again highlights the importance of accounting for international dynamics in examining agricultural quantities.

Over the last few decades, public and private interests have advocated for government policies to globally promote the commercialization of university science thereby altering the way publicly-funded research universities function. This has been particularly true in the U.S. and in its publicly-funded university system which began during the latter half of the 19th century. To understand the extent of this change, one needs to understand the formation and social basis for the U.S. public research university system. Federal legislation passed between 1862 and 1914, established public universities in every U.S. state to serve the citizens of each state with applied research and community-based education which provided free access to the research knowledge. Following World War II, these research universities were further augmented by policies which established a social contract between science and society whereby peer governed scientific research would provide benefits to society in exchange for substantial public support of university research. A key to implementing this social contract was the 1950 formation of the National Science Foundation which designated the universities as the primary basic research infrastructure for the nation . This social contract, which assumed that both public goods and private goods are needed to enhance the general public good, created a division of labor between the private and public research sectors . Universities received public funding to do basic and other research without direct applications for commercial products. The private sector, on the other land, conducted more applied and proprietary research . The values of these two communities vary significantly . The primary goal of industry research is to generate trade secrets, patents and exclusive licensing for commercial gain. Research agendas are set through a hierarchical structure with an emphasis on secrecy, intellectual property and proprietary products. In contrast, university research primarily conducted within a more individualistic organizational structure is generally expected to advance knowledge and address broad social problems. Research priority setting and review processes are more transparent, and knowledge is made available to the public through professional journals and university and government publications .

By the late 1970s and early 1980s, however, U.S. policy makers began to specify how these benefits would occur by establishing special mechanisms for university-industry relationships . Key legislation including the 1980 Senate Bayh-Dole Act, the 1980 Stevenson-Wydler Technology Innovation Act, the 1986 Federal Technology Transfer Act, and a series of executive orders and judicial decisions, placed a new emphasis on harnessing university research to foster the emergence of the knowledge economy and promote university-industry collaborations . The Bayh-Dole Act, in particular, created a uniform patent policy among the many federal agencies that fund research, enabling nonprofit organizations, including a provision enabling universities to retain title to inventions made under federal funded research programs. Universities were encouraged to collaborate with commercial organizations, particularly small businesses, to promote the utilization of inventions arising from federal funding. In 2002, an opinion piece in The Economist observed that the Bayh-Dole Act is perhaps the most inspired piece of legislation to be enacted in America over the past half-century. At the 30th anniversary of Bayh-Dole Act, the Association of University Technology Managers noted that this legislation changed fundamentally the way America develops technologies from federally funded university research and effectively secured the country’s leadership position in innovation . Since the passage of the Bayh-Dole legislation, many countries worldwide have adopted similar policies including Brazil, China, Germany, Japan, Russia, South Korea, and the United Kingdom. Although partnerships between universities and industries had existed for several decades, the new emerging types of university-industry relationships, stimulated in part by these policy changes and particularly in biotechnology and agricultural biotechnology, were generally more varied, wider in scope, more aggressive and experimental, and higher in public visibility than the relationships of the past . The rationale behind these policy reforms and partnerships was that the knowledge economy provided new opportunities for the private sector to utilize research universities’ technologies to foster economic growth . The assumption was that the UIRs would foster the flow of knowledge and technology from the university to the private sector, while also generating increased basic research funding without changing the activities of working scientists,best indoor vertical garden system the university at a structural level, or the process and outcomes of research and educational activities. However, a number of research analysts and skeptics have countered that commercialization of university science threatens the distinct cultures and their important complementary functions . They claim that the university is losing its distinctive incentive system, which is structured to promote a focus on publicly accessible outputs for which the private sector cannot capture sufficient rewards. Some claim that commercialization of university science is blurring distinctions between the two research cultures. Moreover, these analysts maintain that the research cultures are converging and that convergence favors the private sector. Some research institutions and private industry are engaged in basic research and an increasing number of universities are involved in the production of intellectual property and the creation of start-up companies. In 2011, U.S. universities and their inventors earned more than US$ 1.8 billion from commercializing their academic research, and collecting royalties from a variety of sources such as new breeds of wheat and strawberries, a new drug for treatment of HIV, and longstanding arrangements over products like Gatorade. These universities also completed over 5 000 licenses, filed for over 12 000 new patents and created 617 start-up companies .

Nevertheless, changes in universities are matters of degree. In recent years universities conducted 53% of the basic research in the U.S. while industry accounted for just 14%. Moreover, although university patenting actually has increased dramatically, universities still account for less than 5% of patents granted in the U.S. . However, several reasons for concern regarding an erosion of public interest research at universities still exist. Studies have found a rise in data withholding, secrecy, and impaired communication among university scientists . Studies have also explored how academic-industry interactions lead university and industry collaborators to take on characteristics of their counterparts and foster institutional conflicts of interest ; how university research topics over time come to parallel private sector research topics ; and how scientific fraud is associated with commercial ties . Industry funding has also been correlated with outcomes favorable to the funder, perhaps due to researcher bias, whether conscious or unconscious, associated with conflicts of interests . One major explanation for the effects of commercialization on university science is the shift in institutional cultures that shape scientists’ preferences and actions. This focus on institutional cultures and structures, however, tends to mask the internal diversity of university researchers and the co-existence of complex, even contradictory, institutional rationales and scientist perspectives and values. Therefore, it is equally important to focus on the micro-level to better understand scientists as strategic actors in the midst of shifting boundaries between the two cultures. This perspective acknowledges that scientists are self-interested, purposively rational actors motivated to act by personal preferences or tastes within particular institutional contexts. Furthermore, this perspective recognizes the potential for variation among scientists, administrators and managers within and between institutional cultures . In this paper, we examine the persistence or convergence of the two cultures of science through exploration of the perceptions and values of university and industry scientists, managers and administrators who participate in or oversee university-industry research collaborations in the area of agricultural biotechnology.Traditionally, agriculture has been the recipient of substantial public investment to support and attract private sector investment . Further, university research plays a more integral role in the field of biotechnology than for many other areas such as mechanical engineering, computer science or chemistry. More than two decades ago, writers were referring to universities as the lifeblood of biotechnology . In addition, agricultural biotechnology was an early target of efforts to commercialize university research because so much of the research for the emerging agricultural biotechnology sector was conducted in the large public U.S. universities and their colleges of agriculture and life sciences . Statements from university leaders and industry 20 yr ago indicated that agricultural biotechnology would revolutionize farming in the future with tremendous impact on the crops and animals grown for food and affecting agriculture in ways never before dreamed possible.The first commercial biotech crops were introduced in 1996. The acreage/hectarage for these crops have increased every year from 1996 to 2012 in both developing and industrial countries, increasing from 1.7 million ha in 1996 to over 170 million ha in 2012. While the U.S. continues to be the lead country with 69.5 million ha followed by Brazil , Argentina , Canada , and India , for the first time, in 2012, developing countries planted more hectares of the principal biotech crops than industrial countries. The number of countries growing these crops also continues to increase, reaching 20 developing countries and 8 industrial countries. Further, stacked rather than single traits are becoming more important, with 13 countries planting biotech crops with two or more traits in 2012. At the same time last year a record number of farmers grew Bt crops with over 90% being small resource-poor farmers in developing or emerging countries. In China a record 7.2 million small farms elected to plant biotech cotton.