AGree sets up research committee to help set priorities
August 12, 2011 | 06:34 PM | Filed in: Research
AGree, the foundation-funded initiative on the 2012 farm bill, announced today that it has established a research committee composed mostly of academics to advise its leaders on agricultural research priorities.
The committee is so diverse that AGree seems likely to call for increased government funding in areas of agricultural research ranging from biotechnology to organic farming at a time when Congress is more inclined to cut agricultural research rather than increase funding for it.
Unlike farm subsidies, food stamps and some conservation programs, which are mandatory spending once they are authorized, agricultural research faces two tests before it is implemented: convincing the House and Senate Agriculture committees to authorize it and then getting appropriators each year to provide money for it.
Appropriators have already cut the agriculture research budget this year, and the debt ceiling-deficit reduction agreement also calls for more cuts to discretionary programs, which would include agricultural research.
AGree’s mission, according to a news release, is to focus the farm bill on “feeding a growing population, enhancing environmental sustainability, and ensuring our farmers and rural communities have a bright future.”
The co-chairs of AGree are former Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman; former Agriculture Deputy Secretary Jim Moseley; Gary Hirshberg, chairman, president and “CE-Yo” of Stonyfield Farm; and Emmy Simmons, former assistant administrator for economic growth, agriculture and trade at the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Members of the research committee:
AGree is funded by Ford Foundation, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, The William & Flora Hewlett Foundation, W.K. Kellogg Foundation, The McKnight Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, The David and Lucile Packard Foundation and The Walton Family Foundation.
The committee is so diverse that AGree seems likely to call for increased government funding in areas of agricultural research ranging from biotechnology to organic farming at a time when Congress is more inclined to cut agricultural research rather than increase funding for it.
Unlike farm subsidies, food stamps and some conservation programs, which are mandatory spending once they are authorized, agricultural research faces two tests before it is implemented: convincing the House and Senate Agriculture committees to authorize it and then getting appropriators each year to provide money for it.
Appropriators have already cut the agriculture research budget this year, and the debt ceiling-deficit reduction agreement also calls for more cuts to discretionary programs, which would include agricultural research.
AGree’s mission, according to a news release, is to focus the farm bill on “feeding a growing population, enhancing environmental sustainability, and ensuring our farmers and rural communities have a bright future.”
The co-chairs of AGree are former Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman; former Agriculture Deputy Secretary Jim Moseley; Gary Hirshberg, chairman, president and “CE-Yo” of Stonyfield Farm; and Emmy Simmons, former assistant administrator for economic growth, agriculture and trade at the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Members of the research committee:
- Bruce Babcock, professor of economics and director for the Center for Agricultural and Rural Development at Iowa State University;
- Chris Barrett , professor of applied economics and management and international professor of agriculture at Cornell;
- Ken Cassman, systems agronomist at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln and chair of the Independent Science and Partnership Council of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research;
- Douglas Jackson-Smith, professor and director of graduate studies in sociology at Utah State University;
- John Reganol, professor of soil science and agroecology at Washington State University;
- Beatrice (Bea) Rogers, professor of economics and food policy and director of the food policy and applied nutrition program at Tufts University;
- Katherine (Kitty) Smith, chief economist and vice president for programs at American Farmland Trust and former head of the USDA Economics Research Service;
- Tom Tomich, professor and founding director of the University of California at Davis Agricultural Sustainability Institute;
- Parke Wilde, associate professor in the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University.
AGree is funded by Ford Foundation, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, The William & Flora Hewlett Foundation, W.K. Kellogg Foundation, The McKnight Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, The David and Lucile Packard Foundation and The Walton Family Foundation.
