0023-6152

AA00697606

2339028

This research analyzes the returns on the donor’s investment on agricultural development as a recipient country. In the case of the Cerrado Agricultural Development in Brazil, which was successfully completed in 2001, Japan invested about 60 billion yen during the 1979 and 2001 period and the production in the area has been growing. In this research, the evaluation of the return on the donor’s investment was estimated by assuming that there was no Cerrado agricultural development and the world food market prices were much higher. The results indicate that Japan may have gained returns of as much as 12.4 billion yen through the imports of soybeans, soybean–meal, and soybean–oil. There are many more products being imported to Japan such as corn, livestock products, coffee, etc. which are produced in a large amount in Cerrado and the total merit to Japan should be enormous considering that Japan is the largest food net importer in the world. Accordingly, the total investment by Japan as a donor may be returned with more value than the total investment during each year over two decades. This indicates that the development project has been a success economically and the benefits go to the recipient country, the donor and the consumers in the rest of the world. This further proclaims, from the global food security point of view, the importance of investment in cases like the Cerrado development. JIRCAS contributed to the Cerrado development, especially the use of newly developed suitable varieties of soybeans in Cerrado. The return to Japan from the JIRCAS’ contribution may be significant.