But that's not really how fundamental research or technological advancement works. A ton of our advances in improving crop productivity came out of research th

But that's not really how fundamental research or technological advancement works. A ton of our advances in improving crop productivity came out of research that wasn't directly related to solving hunger. The modern internal combustion engine, for example, brought together many technologies and came out of advancement of many different kinds of research and manufacturing changes. If, in the 1500s you had focused all of your R&D efforts on improving food production and distribution, there's a good chance you never invent the ICE. That's the thing about R&D, the discoveries in some areas often overlap with uses in other areas (sometimes in complex ways that we don't discover for a long time). So if you say: "we'll only do R&D in food production", you might actual end up stifling many technologies that would have massively helped you with food production down the line.