The Americas are falling behind in new agricultural technologies. Here’s how to catch up.

It is no secret that the Western Hemisphere is an agri-food powerhouse. It is home to over half of the world’s top producers and exporters of staple crops, including soybeans, corn, wheat, and rice. Additionally, countries across the Americas produce and export dozens of specialized crops, including coffee, blueberries, oranges, bananas, and much more. Investment into the research and development of agricultural technologies (AgTech) and practices has been a key reason why the hemisphere leads the world in so many areas of food production. However, that leading position is faltering as other countries have begun to surpass the Americas in productivity gains and investment into agriculture research and development (AgR&D). If the Western Hemisphere hopes to maintain its competitiveness, it must prioritize innovation, or it risks losing its dominant position.

On July 23, the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security’s GeoStrategy Initiative, in partnership with The Mosaic Company, hosted the third private roundtable of the Food security: Strategic alignment in the Americas project. The roundtable brought together dozens of leading experts from across the Western Hemisphere, representing research organizations, universities, agri-food companies, governments, and multilateral institutions. In the discussion, a central theme emerged—the importance of innovation in the agriculture sector and investing in AgR&D across the hemisphere.

Robust AgR&D strategies play a central role in advancing food security. The AgTech that follows from investment in AgR&D has been one of the reasons why the agricultural sector in the Americas’ largest producers of staple crops—Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Canada, and the United States—became world leaders. Capabilities in AgTech, however, are not evenly distributed across the Americas, neither among the five largest agricultural producers nor the hemisphere’s many smaller producers.

The United States offers an important example of just how critical investment in AgR&D is, as well as the pitfalls that follow if such investment falters. For decades after World War II, public and private investment in agricultural innovation in the United States dramatically increased on- and off-farm productivity, with an average annual growth in total factor productivity (TFP) between 1948 and 2017 of 1.47 percent. Productivity growth was due mainly to capital improvements (versus land or labor expansion, which along with capital are the three components of the TFP metric). The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) asserted that TFP increases over this seventy-year period “can be attributed to the advent of new technologies, innovations, and process improvements in the farm sector.” Extension programs, led by local universities and supported through public investment, have significantly aided these productivity gains. Extension services provide open and accessible education and training on science-based, modern technologies to farmers, consumers, and families.

Despite the effectiveness of such investment—the USDA estimates that every dollar of AgR&D generates twenty dollars in economic benefits—US public investment in agricultural innovation has declined by one-third over the past twenty years. Since its 2002 investment peak, the United States has fallen behind on investment increases compared to its biggest competitors, including China, India, Brazil, and the European Union (EU). By the late 2010s, both China and the EU were investing significantly more public funds than the United States, with India and Brazil not far behind. Around 2013, China surpassed the United States as the world’s largest public funder of AgR&D, apart from the EU, with its investments by 2022 close to doubling those of the United States. Over the same period, however, private sector AgR&D funding climbed in the United States, helping to offset the decline in public sector investment. Whether that additional private spending has been enough in quantity or kind to offset the drop in public investment remains an open question; USDA data indicate that TFP in US agriculture peaked in 2009 and then declined by approximately 6 percent over the following decade. (As is true generally, in the agricultural space, private sector R&D focuses on proprietary technologies and marketable innovations, requiring that public investment fill gaps in areas that lack commercial incentives but are nonetheless vital for global food security.)

To be successful, innovation ecosystems require high levels of cooperation across sectors. That cooperation is imperative if the resulting technologies and process improvements are to be integrated into agricultural practices. Here, again, is where the United States historically has led. Successful US partnerships among federal and state governments, researchers at land-grant universities, and agri-business companies—including input (seed, fertilizer, herbicide), technology and software, and farming equipment companies—time and again have generated breakthrough technologies resulting in significant on- and off-farm gains in agriculture. These breakthroughs have included hybrid and bioengineered seeds, new fertilizers and insecticides, digital tools for precision agriculture, and a wide range of technologies for sustainable and regenerative farming.

Yet new technological tools are only half the battle. Farm management best practices play a crucial role for improving innovative productivity, ensuring healthy soil conditions with nutrient-rich structures. Agronomic practices such as balancing crop rotation, implementing conservation tillage, or leveraging nutrient management can promote sustainable farming with optimal ecological and scientific conditions for growing more resilient crops.

Today, technical breakthroughs continue to hold great promise. Precision farming and digital agriculture utilizing artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to help farms of all sizes. For example, AI could be used in advanced monitoring systems using data from sensors, satellites, drones, and soil maps for irrigation, fertilization, or applying crop protection products so diseases and pests can be detected earlier. It can also be used to sift through trend data to forecast agronomic modeling with farmer-specific weather, soil, and crop information. And it can help with machine learning, equipping farmers to learn new skills and systems to adapt to changing conditions. The optimization of field management using AI can improve proactive farming strategies.

New technologies such as these benefit from international coordination. In the Western Hemisphere, AI-driven data analytics can improve understanding of agricultural practices and food security of local contexts across regions, a phenomenon sometimes referred to as a “distributed brain.” But such outcomes will be accelerated only if governments sustain their investments in AgR&D, including through transnational research partnerships. Historically, such initiatives have catalyzed agricultural innovation across the hemisphere. Brazil and the United States, the hemisphere’s two agricultural giants, began systematic AgR&D public-private-academic cooperation in the 1960s and 1970s through projects in which the US government connected US universities with Brazilian companies, farmers, and local governments to catalyze AgR&D investment.

These partnerships continue today. Brazil is now a leading funder and partner for such transnational initiatives, with much of its effort directed at cooperation with US universities. Academic research institutions are critical. A substantial percentage of all AgR&D is conducted at universities, and university faculty often work directly with farmers, who become more likely to adopt new and co-developed AgTech.

Governments hold the key to filling investment gaps. Policymakers should emphasize the importance of transnational synergies, with AgR&D projects focused on implementing technology and innovation agendas to enhance the competitiveness of inter-American agricultural markets. There is much to fund. Four of the top ten AgTech startups in 2025 selected for the World Food Prize Foundation’s inaugural Innovate for Impact Challenge competition are from the Western Hemisphere. Food security has historically been treated as a topic of concern only when there is a crisis—whether it be economic, climate, or humanitarian. But driving solutions in the agri-food value chain should be approached as a systemic issue that requires targeting the industry from the grassroots up—and that begins with AgR&D and AgTech.

Ginger Matchett is a program assistant with the GeoStrategy Initiative in the ’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security.

Peter Engelke is a senior fellow with the ’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security as well as a senior fellow with its Global Energy Center.

Image: Ruben Soth, farmer and project manager of “Flugsaat im Ackerbau,” launches a drone to sow seeds. (Markus Scholz/dpa via Reuters Connect)