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  An economic evaluation of investment in AgriFutures Chicken Meat Program projects (2019-2022) quantity

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The AgriFutures Chicken Meat Program invests in research, development and extension (RD&E) to increase knowledge and understanding that fosters an innovative, adaptive and valuable chicken meat industry. The AgriFutures Chicken Meat Program is funded through statutory levies, paid by chicken meat producers, and Australian Government matching funding. The chicken meat RD&E levy is paid at the first point of sale at a rate of 0.195 cents per chicken sold.

Conducted by Michael Clarke of AgEconPlus, this study evaluated the cost-benefit of projects funded under the AgriFutures Chicken Meat Program RD&E Plan 2019-2022. The impact assessment addressed a population of 29 projects, and both upper-bound and lower-bound estimates of program performance were prepared. Funding from all sources for the 29 projects totalled $8.33 million (present value terms). Of the 29, the impacts from 11 were valued. Funding for the 11 projects where impacts were valued totalled $3.56 million (present value terms) and produced aggregate total expected benefits of $48.09 million (present value terms). This gave an upper-bound estimate of program performance of $44.53 million net present value, and a benefit-cost ratio of approximately 13.49 to 1. The 11 projects valued represented approximately 42.7% of total funding for the 29 projects.

When the benefits of the impacts valued ($48.09 million) were compared with total investment in all projects in the population ($8.33 million), this lowered the investment criteria and provided a lower-bound estimate of program performance. Total investment in the 11 projects produced an estimated net present value of $39.76 million (present value terms), and a benefit-cost ratio of 5.77 to 1.

It was concluded, given the assumptions made in valuing the impacts, that the benefit-cost ratio for investment in the AgriFutures Chicken Meat Program from 2019-2022 lies somewhere between 5.77 and 13.49 to 1.

Results from the analysis show industry, the community and government are expected to derive significant net benefits from investment in the AgriFutures Chicken Meat Program made from July 2019 through to completion of PRJ-012663 in March 2023. Furthermore, the results are somewhat better than those estimated for the Program between 2014-2019, which recorded BCRs of between 2.2 and 11.6 to 1.