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About a month ago, NPPC CEO Neil Dierks gathered the group’s farm bill task force from
around the country to meet in Washington.
Dierks and the 17 representatives from the pork industry sat around a table in the group’s
headquarters, just a few blocks from Capitol Hill. The visiting farmers, meatpackers and other
members settled on just two requests for Congress in the 2018 farm bill: The establishment of a
foot and mouth disease vaccine bank and increased funding for agriculture research.
The NPPC board of directors approved both.
Dierks stressed, though, that it is research for all of agriculture that NPPC supports and not just
studies that support swine production. Pork researchers, he said, will compete along with
everyone else.
“It benefits everybody,” he added. “It’s a greater good for society.”
But there’s a lot that researchers are asking Congress to support. Just as Congress agreed to a
structural overhaul and created NIFA and AFRI in the 2008 farm bill, SoAR and its coalition are
asking for big changes again.
They want new policy that will add mandatory funding for AFRI – something that’s never
been done – and they want a stronger and more independent NIFA director.
Russell explained that rather than a USDA Under Secretary for Research, Education, and
Economics (REE) that encompasses the entire mission area, what’s called for is a powerful
director who is also the chief scientist and has only two core responsibilities: the intramural
research that’s conducted by in-house scientists and extramural research conducted under
competitive grants.
“I think we need to change the culture, change the management and then the funding will
follow,” Russell said.
Lawmakers authorized AFRI at $700 million when the program was created in 2008, but it’s
never gotten the budget to match. Today it stands at about just half that, but Grumbly and others
are confident they’ll get there soon and SoAR has structured its funding proposal on that bet.
The proposal stipulates that the first $700 million in AFRI’s yearly spending would still come
from discretionary funds, but reaching that target would trigger the ability to use mandatory
funds.
The proposal, Grumbly said, would eventually add about $1 billion to the overall research budget
at USDA.
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