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Evaluating Research, Development and Extension: Practical insights from the Queensland Department of Primary Industries and Fisheries Gretchen Carrigan, Fred Chudleigh, Trevor Wilson* Contributed Paper presented at the 52nd Annual Conference of the Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society, Canberra, Australia, February 5th th -8 , 2008 * Gretchen Carrigan, Fred Chudleigh, and Trevor Wilson are Agricultural Economists with the Innovation and Biosecurity Investment Group of the Queensland Department of Primary Industries and Fisheries. Introduction It is well acknowledged that growth in public funding for agricultural research, development, and extension (RDE) has slowed in the past 20 to 30 years. Growth rates in China, Latin America, Africa, and the UK more than halved from the period 1976-1985 to 1985-1995, while growth rates in the US and France also decreased, albeit less markedly (Pal Byerlee 2003). Similar trends have been reported for Canada (Carew 2001) and across clusters of developed and developing countries for the period 1971-1981 to 1981-1991 (Alston, Pardey, Roseboom 1998). This trend is discernable despite a median rate of return of 44 percent among those research evaluations conducted since the seminal papers by Schultz (1953) and Griliches (1958) (Alston, Chan-Kang, Marra, Pardey, and Wyatt 2000). Australia has not been exempt from these funding patterns with evidence of little growth in public expenditure on agricultural research since the mid-1970s (Mullen, 2007). Although historical returns to research have been sound, there is currently an environment of diminishing public funds for agricultural RDE and increasing concerns over the accountability of public spending. In this context, the prioritisation of