If accelerated productivity growth is to be an effective policy response for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture, the appropriate means for raising productivity needs to be addressed. Previous research has shown a close correlation between investments in public agricultural research and total factor productivity (TFP) growth in agriculture (Huffman and Evenson 2006; Alston et al. 2010; Wang et al. 2012, among the most recent, comprehensive studies). Largely neglected from this framework, however, has been the role of the private sector. Private sector spending on agricultural research and development (R&D) has grown more rapidly than public agricultural R&D and is now greater than that of the public sector (Fuglie et al. 2011). While it is widely perceived that both public and private R&D make significant contributions to agricultural productivity growth, private R&D (because of data limitations) has rarely been included in empirical models of agricultural TFP growth.