Those who have a more rational grasp of agronomics recognize the need for continued and accelerated development to increase production enough to meet future needs while reducing adverse impacts.

Like most of his colleagues, Mr. Van Tunen came from Wageningen University, where he was director of the Plant Research Institute in the 1980s. He and others describe it as a dark period in the school’s history. Enrollment was falling. Dutch government investment in agricultural research was being cut, and by the mid-1990s, the university itself, the Netherlands’ agricultural flagship, was in danger of disappearing. . .

“We merged 22 different research institutes in agriculture, food, nutrition and health with thirty agricultural experiment stations while strengthening professional ties to the private sector,” he said. One result is that nearly all the university’s 1,400 food and farm science doctoral students now get to work in a private-sector research lab before finishing their degrees.

Another is that much of the basic science done at the university is financed privately, rather than by the government, although university rules require that all findings be published in scientific journals and be made publicly available.

The diversity of the research stretches far beyond traditional agricultural science. A collaboration with a vegetable processing company uses waste vegetables to create new juices and food colorings. A potato breeder has used genetic sequencing to identify potatoes that absorb less fat during frying.

A Food Valley collaboration between a Dutch dairy giant and medical researchers at the nearby Radboud University Nijmegen is trying to identify the genetic coordinates of cows whose milk produces protein peptides associated with lowering blood pressure. Chicken breeders are working jointly with Maastricht and Wageningen Universities to identify the molecular characteristics of eggs with desirable cholesterol characteristics.

“This was a famous university,” said Roger Van Hoessel, the managing director of the Food Valley organization. “It’s always had an orientation of how to benefit farmers, but that’s become much more complicated now. You have to build a bridge to the world of medicine. It’s not enough to know food technology, but you have to understand the nutritional side too.”

This is a far more effective model for a research institution. It could be further enhanced by philanthropy - say, a Gates foundation funded basic research group - so long as the requirement to publish findings and make them freely available is maintained.

This degree of public-private cooperation has raised concerns that research may be bent to the needs of the food industry; and outside the Netherlands the broad cooperative model, often involving corporate competitors, leaves visitors more than a little puzzled, Mr. Van Hoessel said. He cites the case of Keygene, which was jointly founded by three of the Netherlands’ largest seed competitors.

Kees Reinink, the managing director of Rijk Zwaan, said Keygene made money for them all. “In America, they say the aim is to destroy your competitor,” he said. “Here the aim is to create a win-win situation.”

They could also benefit from some economic education. The aim of competition is not to destroy competitors, it is to improve yourself and remain competitive. That's why competition is useful. It's a reality check that helps keep institutions from drifting off into irrelevancies and ceasing to be productive or useful. If they do that - which is the natural tendency of the bureaucracies that accrete over time in any institution - they will be replaced by more effective competitors. Knowing that this is their fate helps keep them focused on doing useful work. All of society benefits.

Said another way, the current admirable structure of Wageningen University is a consequence of competition. The reason that they reorganized was that their old structure no longer worked. Funding and jobs were going elsewhere, research was being done better by others. America bashing just makes them feel better about adopting American organizational systems. Dysrationalia is rampant, even in admirable institutions, so competition has a continuing role as a reality check.