Science Policy Report

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12 June 2019

In This Issue:

Policy News

Science and Society News

International Corner

Research, Education, Extension Funding Opportunities

Policy News

Last week, the detailed report of the House Agriculture Appropriations bill was released providing further details about how much of the $24.3 billion would go toward research. The initial report was good news for both intra- and extramural research programs providing increases for both accounts. However, during the full Appropriations Committee markup, Subcommittee Chairman Sandford Bishop offered an amendment that provided additional research funding above the initial report. The Agricultural Research Service (ARS) would see a 3 percent increase and funding for the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) would increase by 10 percent. The competitive grants program, the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) would see an increase of $45 million, an 11 percent increase! The bill would also block the administration’s contentious proposal to move NIFA and the Economic Research Service out of the Washington, D.C., area. Read the full article.
 

A Congress that has struggled all year to legislate returned to Washington this week to face two urgent deadlines that, if not met, could lead to a disastrous default on the federal debt and to automatic spending cuts that would sweep like a scythe through the military, federal health care and other popular programs. Congress usually has overcome bouts of fiscal brinkmanship to waive the spending caps over the last four years and suspending or raising the statutory limit on federal borrowing. Lawmakers say they need to act now, before recesses in July and August, to avert a crisis. But so far, a divided Congress has found even usually easy things hard. Read the full article.
 

On June 5, Stacey Plaskett, (D-VI), Biotechnology, Horticulture, and Research Subcommittee of the House Agriculture Committee, Committee Chair, held a hearing “Examining the Impacts of Relocating USDA Research Agencies on Agriculture Research” on the proposed relocation of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Economic Research Service (ERS) and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA). Three witnesses testified at the hearing – all in opposition to the proposed relocation. Invited witnesses included William Tracy, PhD,  faculty member in the Department of Agronomy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison; Jack Payne, PhD, University of Florida’s (UF) Senior Vice President for Agriculture and Natural Resources and the administrative head of UF’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences; and Elizabeth Brownlee, Operator of Nightfall Farm and President of the Hoosier Young Farmers Coalition. Read the full article.
 

Top Senate Republicans will meet with President Donald Trump's negotiating team to discuss whether the party can pass government funding bills amid stalled budget negotiations with congressional Democrats. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Senate Appropriations Chairman Richard Shelby and other Republican appropriators will meet with acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and acting Director of the Office of Management and Budget Russ Vought on Tuesday afternoon, according to three people familiar with the matter. Senate Republicans are trying to figure out whether they can begin moving spending bills absent a two-year spending agreement. Read the full article.
 

House Democrats seeking to keep the lights on in the federal government will put a roughly $1 trillion package of spending bills on the floor next week, pursuing a "minibus" strategy of combining bills to try to pass them quickly. The four-bill minibus is expected to include the two largest of the 12 annual appropriations bills: the defense bill and the labor, health and human services, and education bill. It will also include legislation covering energy and water, and the State Department and foreign operations spending bills. The legislative bill was removed from the minibus package amid disputes over blocking an automatic cost-of-living pay increase for members of Congress. A second five-bill minibus bill which would include the Agriculture bill, the Commerce, Justice, Science bill, the Interior bill, the Housing and Urban Development bill and the Military Construction, Veterans bill. Read the full article.
 

Science and Society News

High maize yields require an adequate supply of N fertilizer; however, nitrogen losses are quite high. As an alternative, fertilizers with nitrification and urease inhibitors have emerged onto the market to increase N supply to crops. In an article recently published in Agronomy Journal, researchers report on a two-year study in southeastern Brazil where rainfall is condensed in a short period and nitrogen fertilization is often split to reduce losses. The team evaluated the effect of splitting or not splitting nitrogen application and applying or not applying stabilizers to prevent losses by volatilization and nitrification at several rates. Read the full article.
 

2019 Career Development Series - Road Trip of Your Career: Planning for Retirement. As with all other career stages, successful retirement requires thought and planning! An active, purposeful and meaningful retirement that is unique to each individual includes planning ahead to consider what retirement looks like, determining activities are meaningful, using one's professional experiences to address broader issues, maintaining an active network, and staying involved with your professional societies. Join us!
 

Soil health research is critical to preserving the environment and increasing farmer yields and profitability. The Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research (FFAR) and FoodShot Global awarded GroundBreaker Prizes to three individuals conducting trailblazing research that improves soil health and enhances soil management practices. ASA and SSSA member Keith Paustian of Colorado State University was awarded one of the inaugural $250,000 GroundBreaker Prizes for the Foodshot Global Challenge: Innovating Soil 3.0. Read the full article.
 

Simon N. Groot of the Netherlands was announced as the 2019 World Food Prize Laureate for his transformative role in empowering millions of smallholder farmers in more than 60 countries to earn greater incomes through enhanced vegetable production, benefitting hundreds of millions of consumers with greater access to nutritious vegetables for healthy diets. As founder and leader of East-West Seed, his initiative over the past four decades has developed a dynamic, smallholder-centric tropical vegetable seed industry, starting in Southeast Asia and spreading through Asia, Africa and Latin America. Mr. Groot will receive the World Food Prize at a ceremony that will be held in the magnificent Iowa State Capitol building in Des Moines, Iowa, on the evening of October 17, 2019. Read the full article.
 

The prestigious U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in Washington, D.C., has voted to allow expulsion of members for breaches of its Code of Conduct, including sexual harassment. Until now, election to the 156-year-old academy, a pinnacle of scientific achievement, has been a lifetime honor. In voting that concluded on 31 May, 84% of those who cast ballots approved an amendment to the organization’s bylaws, allowing expulsion of a member by a two-thirds vote of NAS’s 17-member Council. In June 2018, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), of which NAS is a part, issued a landmark report documenting pervasive sexual harassment in those disciplines, including a broad experience of gender hostility that goes beyond groping and has driven untold numbers of women out of science. Read the full article.
 

ASA and SSSA offer free trial memberships that provides an in-depth look our associated benefits, without the up-front commitment of member dues. The Trial Memberships, gives the opportunity to take a tour, become familiar with ASA, SSSA, our members, and our benefits. If you like what you see and believe, as we do, that this is a valuable addition to your networking and information needs, join and become a member. Already a member? Then invite a colleague to join our Societies and spread the word by sharing these links to future members for details! ASA Membership and SSSA Membership
 

Farmers have been using glyphosate, often under the trade name Roundup, for about four decades now. Farmers felt that they could spray glyphosate with a clear conscience. It doesn't persist in the environment as much as, say, DDT did. It doesn't build up in groundwater like another widely used herbicide, atrazine. And it's certainly less toxic than some alternatives. But now it's under fierce attack, accused of causing cancer. In three civil cases so far, U.S. juries have ordered Roundup's inventor, Monsanto, now owned by Bayer, to pay enormous damages to cancer survivors. Thousands more lawsuits have been filed. Read the full article.
 

A team of researchers at Washington State University (WSU) is putting satellites and drones to work in the hunt for better wheat varieties to help feed a growing world more sustainably. WSU scientists launched a new project this spring, developing techniques that let satellites and flying drones identify and study wheat varieties from overhead. Their effort could speed up research into better, more productive wheat varieties, and could give growers powerful new tools to improve farming. Read the full article.
 

Soil is the foundation of food production on the planet. Clay and organic carbon content of the soil are among the most influential factors in soil functions, productivity, and management. Current laboratory methods for studying clay and organic carbon are slow, highly uncertain, and expensive. Visible near-infrared spectroscopy has shown to be a powerful tool to detect and quantify molecules of interest in a sample. In an article recently published in the Soil Science Society of America Journal, researchers report on a novel method of combinatory on-the-go spectroscopy and soil electrical conductivity measurements in agricultural fields as a substitute to soil sample collection and laboratory analysis. Read the full article.
 

The Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research’s (FFAR) 2018 Annual Report outlines the organization’s success in building strategic public-private partnerships, funding transformative research and supporting the next-generation of researchers. FFAR funded a wide-range of groundbreaking projects in 2018 that address agriculture challenges ranging from methane emissions in cattle to computational modeling of food access. In 2018, FFAR awarded more than 50 grants, totaling over $32 million in FFAR award funding and related support costs. The Foundation collaborated with more than 200 industry, philanthropic and nonprofit partners. These partnerships provided a combined investment of over $60 million to groundbreaking research that is transforming food and agriculture systems. Read the full report.
 

When New Mexico State University (NMSU) Researcher Dr. Sangu Angadi, was traveling to his science center office in Clovis, New Mexico, one spring day, he was engulfed in a prairie dust from a windstorm. Angadi, a crop scientist, had a pretty good idea of the source of the dust - dried fallow fields that had turned to powder over the winter. What he learned later would spur him into seeking new solutions to this decades-long challenge. The dust storm consequences heightened Angadi’s level of urgency to study new ways for efficient water use. Angadi had an idea that was simple yet innovative: Why not create special, non-irrigated “circular buffer strips” within the irrigated fields in Eastern New Mexico and West Texas with center-pivot irrigation? Reduced water availability in recent years had caused many farmers to irrigate only two-thirds of their fields, with a third left fallow an ideal opportunity for the buffer strip project. Read the full article.
 

Support your sciences and reach qualified applicants! The Career Center promotes and encourages opportunities in the agronomic, crop, soil, and environmental sciences and serves as a clearinghouse for resumes and job listings. Employers and recruiters will find the most qualified talent pool with relevant work experience to fulfill their staffing needs. Visit our careers page to browse and post positions. 
 

International Corner

Kenyan agronomists and coffee marketing agents have raised concerns over the use of Roundup, a herbicide produced by the Monsanto Company. While the spray is suspected by some to cause cancer in humans, many farmers still keep using Roundup and assert that it is safe and effective. Read the full article.
 

A major push by some science agencies to make the research they fund open-access on publication — Plan S — has been delayed by a year. Funders now don’t have to start implementing the initiative until 2021, the agencies announced, to give researchers and publishers more time to adapt to the changes the bold plan requires. The group of 19 mainly European funders behind the plan made the changes after a public consultation drew hundreds of responses from publishers, academic libraries and researchers. Read the full article.
 

The International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture is one of the most important achievements of the international community in recent decades. It recognizes the crucial importance of plant genetic resources for ensuring food and nutrition security. There are 145 Contracting Parties to the Plant Treaty, and its multilateral system of access and benefit sharing includes most of the worlds’ largest collections of plant genetic resources for food and agriculture, including those hosted by CGIAR Centers. Authors of a recent Crop Science article describe how CGIAR and the Plant Treaty evolved together and are inextricably intertwined. The genebanks and breeding programs of the CGIAR Centers are both influenced by, and help promote, the Plant Treaty’s objectives of conservation, sustainable use, and equitable sharing of benefits. Read the full article.
 

In some parts of the world, farmers are viewed with respect and cultivating the land is seen as an honorable trade. But in a region where most agriculture is still for subsistence — relying on cutlass, hoe and a hope for rain — farming is a synonym for poverty. While holding about 65 percent of uncultivated arable land, African still imports over 35 billion in food every year. A growing number of young, college-educated Africans are looking to make farming profitable and ‘sexy’ by applying scientific approaches and data-crunching apps. Read the full article.
 

Research, Education, Extension Funding Opportunities

Land O’Lakes, Inc. and Mars Wrigley Confectionery are jointly launching an initiative designed to drive adoption of products and services on-farm at scale to help ensure a more sustainable planet. Across the dairy sector, entrepreneurs are developing new tools every day to help dairy farmers in all aspects of stewardship – including achieving reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Land O’Lakes and Mars are focused on elevating promising products and services in the dairy industry – and providing a platform to employ at scale. Land O’Lakes and Mars are inviting companies and entrepreneurs with new and emerging on-farm sustainability products and services, focused on greenhouse gas reduction, to submit their solution for review by Mars and Land O’Lakes experts. This August, select participants will be invited to present to an audience and panel of industry experts. Mars and Land O’Lakes will showcase these exciting opportunities in the dairy sector for Land O’Lakes members, and host a special pitch event featuring some of the most promising companies. Deadline, June 25. Read the full announcement.
 

Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) Program is accepting applications for its Research for Novel Approaches in Sustainable Agriculture grant program. This program supports projects that use applied research (social science investigations and/or field and laboratory experiments) that test the feasibility of new practices and approaches that have high potential for adoption by farmers. Practices researched may address any of the three tenets of sustainable agriculture: environmental quality, financial viability, and social sustainability including farm succession/transfer, farmer health and well- being, and quality of life. As such, the practices and approaches may be related to production, marketing, business management, human resource management, farm family issues, or other topics relevant to sustainable agriculture. By “novel,” Northeast SARE means that there is some evidence the concept is beneficial, but more data is needed prior to recommending the practice or approach for farmer adoption. Preproposal deadline, June 25. Read the full announcement.
 

Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) is accepting pre-proposals for its Research and Education Grants Program. This program funds applied research and farmer education projects on sustainable farming and food system topics. Northeast SARE offers competitive grants to farmers, educators, agricultural service providers, researchers, graduate students, others to address key issues affecting the sustainability of agriculture throughout the region. Projects must engage farmers as cooperators; aim for specific, measurable change in farm practices; and have a plan to verify results. Projects must explore, improve or expand on practices and approaches that address one or more of the three tenets of sustainable agriculture: environmental quality, financial viability, and social sustainability including farm succession/ transfer, farmer health and well-being and quality of life. Preproposal deadline, June 25. Read the full announcement.
 

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced plans by its Office of Science to establish new multidisciplinary research centers to support advanced research in the emerging field of quantum information science (QIS). The Department issued a combined Notice of Intent (NOI) and Request for Information (RFI) in the Federal Register, seeking input from stakeholders on possible topic areas, organization, requirements, review criteria, and processes for assessing applications, to help inform the development of the FOA.  Input is expected from a range of entities including DOE national laboratories, universities, nonprofits, and others with active research interests in the area. Comment deadline, July 5. Read the full announcement.
 

The Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), an agency under the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), is announcing availability of Conservation Innovation Grants (CIG) to stimulate the development and adoption of innovative conservation approaches and technologies. Proposals will be accepted from the following several states. See the links for full announcement details and deadlines. 
Connecticut – July 1
Ohio – July 12
 

ARPA-E seeks input regarding the development of next-generation hydrokinetic energy converters, specifically tidal stream, riverine, and ocean current turbines, with significantly reduced operation and maintenance (O&M) costs, reduced installation costs, and optimized mass and efficiency. ARPA-E desires input from a broad range of disciplines and fields, including, but not limited to: developers of tidal, riverine, and/or ocean current energy systems, hydrodynamics, structural dynamics, controls engineering, design optimization, civil and environmental engineering, offshore and marine engineering, predictive maintenance, robotics, unmanned underwater vehicles, and others. Consistent with the agency’s mission, ARPA-E is seeking information regarding clearly disruptive, novel technologies, early in the research and development (R&D) cycle, and not integration strategies for existing technologies. Deadline, July 19. Read the full announcement.
 

NRCS is announcing the availability of up to $12.5 million in CIG funding. The purpose of CIG is to stimulate the development and adoption of innovative conservation approaches and technologies in conjunction with agricultural production. CIG projects are expected to lead to the transfer of conservation technologies, management systems, and innovative approaches (such as market-based systems) to agricultural producers, into NRCS technical manuals and guides, or to the private sector. CIG generally funds pilot projects, field demonstrations, and on-farm conservation research. On-farm conservation research is defined as an investigation conducted to answer a specific applied conservation question using a statistically valid design while employing farm-scale equipment on farms, ranches or private forest lands. Applications will be accepted from eligible entities in any of the 50 States, the District of Columbia, the Caribbean Area (Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands), and the Pacific Islands Area (Guam, American Samoa, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands). Deadline, July 30. Read the full announcement.
 

The USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture is soliciting topics commodity board entities are willing to co-fund equally with NIFA. To be considered for inclusion in future Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) competitive grants program Requests for Applications (RFAs), topics must relate to the established priority areas of AFRI. If, after NIFA’s evaluation, proposed topics are accepted for inclusion, they will be incorporated into AFRI competitive grants program RFAs. As a condition of funding grants pertaining to a topic, NIFA will require an agreement with the commodity board to provide funds equal to the amount NIFA is contributing under the agreed upon topic. Comments deadline is August 5. Read the full announcement. 
 

This program was designed to assist 1994 Land-Grant Institutions (Tribal Colleges) in building institutional research capacity through applied projects that address student educational needs and meet community, reservation or regional challenges.  Awards are to be made on the basis of a competitive review process. Collaboration with 1862 or 1890 Land-Grant Institutions, the USDA Agricultural Research Service (ARS), a Non-Land-Grant College of Agriculture (NLGCA), or at least one forestry school funded under the McIntire-Stennis Cooperative Forestry Research Program is a requirement. Eligible institutions may propose projects in any discipline of the food, agricultural or natural resource sciences. Deadline, August 9. Read the full announcement.
 

Sources: New York Times; Politico; National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition Blog; FFAR; ScienceInsider; World Food Prize; NPR; WSU News; News Center NMSU; Nature; All Africa; USDA; ARPA-E

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