edge, science, technology, inputs, markets, credits, capital and assets. This implies primarily research, education and extension organizations, but also government agencies, ad­ministrative and political decision-making bodies, NGOs and associations, and private enterprises, acting within the food chain and interacting with it e.g., in regulation, input production, waste management, markets and financing. The North American and European agricultural innovation sys­tems have had a major impact on shaping a broad range of AKST organizations outside the region, for example, trans­national private companies and NAE-based and -dominated international organizations, and the CGIAR, as well as many national organizations of Africa, Asia and Latin America.

5.5.1.1 Ongoing trends
Formal AKST structures started to take shape in the late 1800s. In the USA, contrary to most of Europe, educa­tion, research and extension were integrated among each others (Huffman and Evenson, 1993), while in Russia they were separate with no public extension service (Miller et al., 2000). In USA, decisions on AKST were taken at state level which fostered innovation and diversity, while in East­ern Europe there was a strictly centralized top-down model (Miller et al., 2000). The governmental responsibility for AKST in NAE rested traditionally with an agricultural min­istry, but now is increasingly been brought into closer con­nection with the general public KST and innovation policy (OECD, 1999, 2005abc). To counteract consequent disinte­gration of components of AKST, cooperation between them and across institutes (especially between research institutes and universities), disciplines and territories, is increasingly being encouraged, also by specific funds. This has been more successful for research and extension entities that for universities. The organizational structure chosen for AKST components seems to have profound influences, and effec­tive cooperation across ministry boundaries seems to be very challenging (OECD, 1999).
     AKST grew during the first half of the 1900s, and the pace accelerated after World War II. The share of public AKST funds to universities increased from the 1970s on­wards. Since the 1980s the number of facilities has declined, and they have been privatized and rationalized (Alston et al., 1998). Although the share of agriculture in total R&D funding has declined, the agricultural research intensity ratio (agricultural public R&D relative to agricultural GDP) has risen more than the average science and technology research intensity ratio (Alston et al., 1998). In general, the level of support reflects the size of the country's agricultural sector. The largest budgets for agricultural research are found in the US, Japan, France, Canada, the UK, Italy, Germany and the Netherlands (Pardey et al., 1999). Spending on private-sector agricultural research is greatest in the US, Japan, the UK, France and Germany, mainly thanks to the various multinational conglomerates that have their headquarters in these countries. The figures suggest that private- and public-sector research complement rather than substitute each other. Countries that have traditionally provided sub­stantial support for public-sector research have created an enabling environment for research and technology develop­ment, which motivates the private sector to advance its own research. Between 1981 and 1993 private-sector research

expenditure grew by 5.1% per year while public-sector re­search expenditure grew by only 1.8% (Alston et al., 1998). By 2000, private sector investments accounted for around 55% of all agricultural R&D in developed countries, but in low-income countries, it was negligible (CGIAR Sci­ence Council, 2005). The growth in aggregate agricultural research (public and private sector) continues at a rate of approximately 3.4% per year, slightly lower than the 4% growth rate in total research (ISNAR, 2003).
     NAE governments are funding higher education with an increasing tendency towards tuition fees, and also "basic" and "pre-competitive" sectoral research, but economic sec­tors are increasingly encouraged to fund sectoral research, and extension/development costs are addressed to clients (OECD, 1999).
     The involvement of the private companies in agricultural extension has also gone up (Umali and Schwartz, 1994), while public extension services have become increasingly chargeable and have been down-sized (Read et al., 1988; OSI, 2006) except in some European countries with small farm-dominated agriculture or a conscious choice for inde­pendence of commercial interests (OECD, 1999). However, this proportion of private funding is about the same as the general repartition of private funding of R&D.
     The model for international research centers was intro­duced after World War II, and in the 1970s they were united to form CGIAR, whose centers grew in size and numbers but whose budget in the 1990s stagnated and then took a downturn, until the year 2000 when it started recovering. In 2000, CGIAR represented 1.5% of the global public sector investments in agricultural R&D and 0.9% of all public and private agricultural R&D spending (CGIAR Science Coun­cil, 2005).
     In NAE agricultural research organizations, there ap­pears to be a decrease in the importance of traditional pro­ductivity-oriented agricultural research and an increase in research on socially relevant themes such as environment and food safety. A similar (although less pronounced) change is also apparently occurring in many developing countries (ISNAR, 2003).
     Agricultural research policy is now less frequently co­ordinated and formulated in agricultural research institu­tions and is increasingly becoming the responsibility of government ministries or science and technology councils. In addition, agricultural research policy is increasingly be­ing integrated into general science policy. When agricultural research institutions operate as commercial suppliers of re­search, for example under contract, they are likely to de­velop a strong client focus, moving close to the goals defined by their clients. Indeed, some institutions are implementing active commercial strategies in order to attain these goals. If the institutions' legal frameworks permit, their client base may very varied and include government ministries, regional and local government entities, industries and farmers' as­sociations. This development is not welcomed in all circles (ISNAR, 2003). In the USA, for instance, researchers' com­mercial activities tend to reduce their creativity and their willingness to undertake basic research (Huffman and Just, 1999).
     Over the past decade, the structure and organization of agricultural research have been subject to accelerated