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Ag Colleges Tell Feds That More Research Funding is Needed
USAgNet - 04/19/2018

A new effort to boost federal investment in agricultural research launched in Washington, D.C., bringing together Iowa State University with15 other public and private universities. The initiative, FedByScience, timed with the release of the 2018 House Farm Bill, focuses on demonstrating to the public and policymakers the many ways that USDA-funded universities and researchers are creating a safer, healthier and more productive food system.

"As researchers, we consider it our job to provide real-world solutions," said Lisa Schulte Moore, professor of natural resource ecology and management at Iowa State, whose water quality research in the Midwest is featured on the new initiative's website. "But solid science and training the next generation of problem-solvers requires additional investment into our nation's future."

Schulte Moore participated in FedByScience briefings this week for Senate and House of Representatives staff. The effort tells stories in which scientific discoveries and innovations have improved the way food is produced and distributed.

FedByScience highlights the work of Schulte Moore and others. Schulte Moore and her colleagues, supported by USDA grants and other funding sources, examined a set of problems confronting corn and soybean farmers-soil and nutrient retention, especially during rainstorms-and engineered an improbable solution: interspersing strips of native prairie vegetation throughout the crop rows. Her team estimated that the prairie strips solution could be used on 9.6 million acres of cropland in Iowa and a large portion of the 170 million acres under similar management in the United States.

"Access to safe, nutritious food and a healthy environment is a fundamental human right. The need for healthy food will only grow as we look to the future. There is no issue of greater importance for our experts in the agricultural and food sciences and few more deserving of federal support" said Kathryn Boor, PhD, FedByScience co-chair and The Ronald P. Lynch Dean of Cornell University's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

The agriculture and food production industries are facing considerable challenges today. For instance, Florida's orange growers have been decimated by citrus greening disease, which has shrunk production every year for the past five years. A recent report from the National Academies concluded that, in the past 13 years, citrus greening has gone from a brand new disease to a chronic, long-term burden spread throughout Florida. As a result, Brazil has gained an increasingly larger share of the market while US farmers still have no answer for the bacteria that causes the disease.

Besides Iowa State University, participating universities include Colorado State University, Cornell University, Kansas State University, Michigan State University, New Mexico State University, North Carolina State University, Purdue University, Texas A&M University, University of California at Davis, University of Florida, University of Georgia, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Washington University, St. Louis.


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