Let me add that before I moved to Canada I worked for an organization called the London Development Agency. My role there was to work out how to extract technology from London's 42 universities, institutes of higher education, or whatever. The thing that became very apparent was that it wasn't that universities couldn't do it—they had lots of ideas—but that small industries didn't have the time to go and find those ideas.The solution became to give the industries money whereby they could seek out, from places such as universities, solutions to the problems they experienced.
So there is a way in which you can actually encourage them to innovate.
But I think the other point is that if you look at the history of wheat in the Prairies, the productivity nowadays is probably about 240% of what it was 100 years ago. Most of that increase in productivity has come about through changes in agronomic practices. They are not really commercializations, but they made a huge difference to productivity on the farm. Within agriculture there are many examples like that.
I think it's a rare thing to have a new product you can actually sell in an agricultural industry.
As for your figures about spending on R and D, I would take them at face value. They don't particularly surprise me.