Not too waxy, not too floury, easily peeled, and with a slightly nutty flavour: the rooster potato is a solid all-rounder. It’s also Ireland’s favourite spud, making up seven in ten potatoes purchased in Irish supermarkets.

The rooster is also a triumph of Irish ag-tech. Roosters were first bred in 1990 by scientists at Teagasc. Teagasc is a government funded quasi think-tank for the agricultural sector. Beyond the rooster, Teagasc is responsible for numerous innovations such as nutrient management tools and food processing technologies. 

Now Ireland, and the world, has a potato problem. Bad growing weather means we have 10 per cent fewer of them than last year. So much rain fell that hundreds of acres of them rotted in the fields. Shay Phelan at Teagasc, who knows all about potatoes, says stores now sell Irish Roosters in smaller 2.5kg bags just to keep some on the shelves.

Irish farming now faces big problems. As the earth gets warmer, many crops will start to die. In Ireland, the gases that come from farming hurt our environment more than anything else. As more people fill our world, we need to grow more food while using less of everything.

An alternative way of organising institutes such as Teagasc could speed up innovation and propel Irish agriculture forward. The alternative setups are known as Advanced Research Projects Agencies, or ARPAs.

What’s an ARPA?

ARPAs are a type of research institution. They are a reaction to slow, hierarchical research institutions which are the status quo. ARPAs, by contrast, are designed to be nimble.

They have a few key features. First, they operate with a high degree of autonomy. Second, they are focused on high-risk, high-reward projects. Third, their leader (known as a program director) is empowered to make decisions. Fourth, they are interdisciplinary. Fifth, they have short term funding cycles. 

The last feature, which might be the most important, is that they have a specific target. ARPAs are designed to do a specific job in a specific space of time. 

ARPAs aren’t right for every type of scientific research. They don’t work well for research that lacks a clear goal, such as blue sky basic research. Neither do they work well for low-risk research that’s designed to incrementally improve an existing technology. 

There’s a “goldilocks” grade of research that’s a good fit for an ARPA. It works best in a domain that’s well defined, with important unanswered questions and a good prospects for commercialisation. There should be a goal worthy of all the resources and effort.

ARPAs are modelled on a US group called, DARPA. Over 50 years, DARPA research led to the creation of the Internet and GPS, among many other innovations. The model has proliferated. In the US there is ARPA-H; Wellcome Leap and ARIA in Britain; JEDI in Europe; SPRIN-D in Germany, and Moonshot in Japan. They have delivered innovations for mRNA vaccines, delivery drones, carbon capture, green hydrogen, quantum computing, and infrastructure modelling. 

A new EU report on innovation policy, The Heitor Report, urges the EU and national governments to set up ARPA-like structures. This is an opportunity for the Irish government. 

An Ag-ARPA

This is an opportunity for Ireland. Heitor Report urges the EU to fund new ARPAs. Ireland has traditional strengths in ag-tech. And the ARPA model is a good fit for ag-tech.

Agriculture tech is in the goldilocks zone with measurable outcomes, important unanswered questions, a good chance of commercialisation and a big prize. Farming is plagued by slow technological adoption and dominated by entrenched interests. An ARPA dedicated to food and agriculture could quickly develop technologies from advanced disease monitoring systems to climate-resilient crops. 

An Irish AgARPA could, for instance, fund ambitious projects to develop crops engineered for extreme weather resilience or pioneer new methods of disease detection in livestock using advanced sensors and AI. It could also explore cutting-edge food production technologies like cellular agriculture or precision fermentation, positioning Ireland at the forefront of these emerging industries.

These special projects usually need about $50 million and run for three to five years. They pick up to twenty different groups to do the work. Ireland already gives lots of money to farm research. Teagasc gets €168 million for 2024, and the Department of Agriculture has €22.45 million for research. Ireland could start small, with just one or two project leaders, to show how well it works. This would fit with the money already spent.

An Irish AgARPA makes financial sense. Ireland could attract significant European investment for agricultural innovation. The EU is already heavily focused on modernizing farming through programs like Horizon Europe. An Irish AgARPA could tap into these funding streams while building on existing European partnerships. This would multiply the impact of an initial investment and help position Ireland as a leader in European agricultural innovation.

The timing is critical. Ireland has distinct advantages over other European nations: its strong farming sector, thriving tech industry, and proven ability to commercialize new technologies. By acting now to create an AgARPA, it can build on these strengths to develop breakthrough farming solutions that work not just for Ireland, but for all of Europe, and continue to perform well in the export market.