The balance of funding for this kind of research has shifted significantly during the past decade from the public to the private sector, and there has been a corresponding reduction in national, non-commercial agricultural research capacity that needs to be reversed.
Companies produce products whose costs are recoverable in the marketplace.
If such crop improvement research were left to normal markets for private provision, then it would be systematically under-supplied. This is a typical feature. If such research were wholly private, even in a perfectly functioning market, the demands of rich consumers for innovation in their own interests would overwhelm the price signals from poor consumers and small-scale farmers.