(This analysis is a preview of the
USDA chapter in the forthcoming AAAS Report XXXII: Research and Development
FY 2008, a comprehensive look at the President's budget for R&D in FY
2008. More tables and continually updated supplemental materials on R&D in
the FY 2008 budget can be found on the AAAS R&D Web site at http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd.)
Highlights
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R&D in the U.S.
Department of Agriculture (USDA) would fall 10.8 percent from the final 2007 appropriation
to $2.0 billion in 2008 (see Table II-13).
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On the extramural side, the National Research Initiative (NRI) of competitively
awarded research grants would increase $66 million to a record $257 million, although
similar proposed increases in past years have not made it through Congress.
Hatch Act funding falls from an unexpectedly large $323 million 2007 appropriation
down below historical levels to $164 million; although funding is traditionally
distributed by formula, a quarter of the 2008 funds could be awarded competitively.
Total extramural agricultural R&D would fall 18 percent to $534 million.
USDA R&D in the FY 2008 Budget
In
a reprise of past budget requests, the Bush Administration once again proposes
to reduce the USDA R&D budget in its latest request, but in a change from
past budgets the cuts are due to reductions in core R&D programs rather than
proposed eliminations of earmarks. Most years, Congress inserts hundreds of millions
of dollars in R&D funding for congressionally designated, performer specific
R&D projects which USDA proposes to cancel in the following year, but in the
recently finalized 2007 budget Congress chose not to earmark, so the 2008 budget’s
proposed cuts are cuts to non-earmarked funding, a 10.8 percent or $245 million
decline in USDA R&D down to $2.0 billion (see Table
II-13). The AAAS analysis of the final FY 2006 budget counted $331 million
in USDA R&D earmarks in FY 2006, a total which drops to $0 in 2007 and which
is responsible for the decline in USDA R&D between 2006 and 2007. The 2008
cuts come from reductions in both intramural R&D and USDA’s extramural R&D
funds distributed competitively or by formula.
In
USDA’s external portfolio, a sharp reduction in formula funding would allow for
a boost to competitively awarded research funds. USDA’s extramural research
grants, nearly entirely to colleges and universities, are administered by the
Cooperative State Research, Education and Extension Service (CSREES). Total CSREES
R&D would fall $120 million or 18.3 percent to $534 million in FY 2008. Within
the declining total, the National Research Initiative, USDA’s main competitive
research grants program, would see its funding jump 35 percent or $66 million
to an all-time high of $257 million in FY 2008 after several years of being stalled
at the $180 million level. Included in the increase is a $19 million start
for a bioenergy and biobased
fuels initiative. But similar increases in the past several budgets have been
rejected by Congress, because they would have been offset by cuts in formula or
earmarked funding.
Indeed,
funding for formula programs would decline sharply in the 2008 proposal,
but there would be further cuts under the surface. The Hatch Act, the largest
funding source for formula-distributed research funds to the nation’s land-grant
universities, received a surprising boost to an unprecedented funding level of
$323 million in the recently finalized 2007 appropriation, nearly double the funding
levels of 2006 and earlier years. The 2008 request, prepared before the 2007 congressional
windfall was announced, would bring funding back down to $164 million (down 49
percent) and just last week USDA proposed to rescind (cancel) $130 million of
the just-appropriated 2007 funds. But below the surface, it appears that USDA
would greatly expand the portion of Hatch Act funding going to competitively awarded
grants. Currently, 25 percent of Hatch Act funding goes to multi-state research
projects; USDA proposes to expand that share to 60 percent, of which 38 percent
would be competitively awarded. It is unclear whether USDA will fully phase in
this expansion in 2007, or wait until 2008. But in either case, it means that
the traditional individual state formula research funds that have traditionally
been at the heart of the Hatch Act could fall from $133 million last year down
to $66 million next year. The USDA proposes a similar move for the Cooperative
Forestry program ($20 million), converting a majority of funding from formula
to competitive. Congress is likely to oppose these formula funding cuts, but it
is unclear whether they will fully reverse the proposed shift toward competitively
awarded research.
Figure 1. (click on the image for
PDF)
Most of USDA’s intramural research is performed in the
Agricultural Research Service (ARS). ARS R&D would fall 9.3 percent or $107
million to $1.0 billion. Unlike in
most years when the proposed eliminations of earmarks would account for the drop,
the 2008 cuts would be from a non-earmarked 2007 base budget.
The
other major USDA R&D agency is the Forest Service, whose R&D budget would
fall $17 million or 5.3 percent down to $305 million. Although the primary focus
of its R&D portfolio is forestry and ecosystems research, in recent years
the Forest Service has emphasized its fire science and wildfire management research
portfolio as well. Most of this research is performed in intramural laboratories.
The falling FY 2008 USDA R&D portfolio would be a dramatic reduction
from recent years in which the department’s R&D funding hit record highs in
inflation-adjusted dollars (see Figure 1). Since hitting a low in FY 1996,
the funding trend had been generally upward, first because the federal budget
surplus made more discretionary funds available to congressional appropriators,
then in FY 2000 and FY 2001 from the release of mandatory competitive research
funds, and since FY 2002 because heightened concern about agricultural terrorism
and the security of USDA laboratories resulted in millions for security upgrades
and other homeland security-related investments. Those needs have waned, and thus
funding has fallen. There had been a steady increase in congressionally earmarked
projects, but the lack of earmarks brings 2007 R&D funding down dramatically.
The 2008 budget would reduce funding even further below that amount.
Figure
2. (click on the image for PDF)
USDA
is the sixth-largest supporter of R&D in the federal government, and its support
is especially important for key disciplines. USDA is responsible for just 5 percent
of all research support in the broad area of the life sciences, but dominates
funding for two disciplines within life sciences, agricultural sciences and environmental
biology. USDA funds more than 90 percent of all federal support for the agricultural
sciences, with the remainder supported by the Agency for International Development
(for international agriculture R&D) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (for aquaculture and other marine-related R&D). USDA is also
an important supporter of chemistry and biology, and represents a majority of
federal support for economics through the Economic Research Service (ERS).
Nearly
two thirds of USDA R&D is performed in USDA’s own laboratories (see Figure
2). ARS, Forest Service, and ERS funding goes almost exclusively to intramural
laboratories, while the slightly greater than one quarter of USDA R&D funding
going to universities and colleges comes from CSREES. These proportions have been
stable in recent years because of the division of labor between ARS and CSREES
in funding external and internal research, but this stability could change. As
part of the reauthorization of the farm bill that Congress will undertake later
this year, there could be significant restructurings in the USDA agricultural
R&D portfolio. Congress is considering various proposals which could combine
ARS and CSREES in a single unit, create a new National Institute for Food and
Agriculture (NIFA) that would be a separate unit to fund competitively awarded
extramural research, or create new structures and programs that would boost competitive
funding within the existing structure. These proposals, plus other proposals to
boost significantly competitive research in general and research on crops as biofuels
in particular, could lead to an expansion in USDA R&D going to universities.
But many of these ideas have been proposed in the past and have generally gone
nowhere, so it remains too soon to tell whether next year’s USDA R&D enterprise
will look dramatically different from this year’s.
(More materials on R&D
in the FY 2008 budget, historical data and charts, and more information on AAAS
Report XXXII: Research and Development FY 2008, can be found on the AAAS R&D
Web site at http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd.)
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March 21, 2007
AAAS R&D Budget and Policy Program
1200 New York Avenue,
NW
Washington, DC 20005
(202) 326-6607
AAAS R&D Web site: http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd
