research about agriculture

Agriculture and Food

Agriculture can help reduce poverty, raise incomes and improve food security for 80% of the world's poor, who live in rural areas and work mainly in farming. The World Bank Group is a leading financier of agriculture.

Healthy, sustainable and inclusive food systems are critical to achieve the world’s development goals. Agricultural development is one of the most powerful tools to end extreme poverty, boost shared prosperity, and feed a projected  10 billion people by 2050 . Growth in the agriculture sector is  two to four times more effective  in raising incomes among the poorest compared to other sectors.

Agriculture is also crucial to economic growth: accounting for 4% of global gross domestic product (GDP) and in some least developing countries,  it can account for more than 25% of GDP .

But agriculture-driven growth, poverty reduction, and food security are at risk: Multiple shocks – from COVID-19 related disruptions to extreme weather, pests, and conflicts – are impacting food systems. The goal of ending global hunger by 2030 is currently off track. Conflicts, climate change, and high food prices are driving food and nutrition insecurity, pushing millions into extreme poverty, and reversing hard-won development gains. Around a quarter of a billion people now face acute food insecurity .

The growing impact of climate change could further cut crop yields, especially in the world’s most food-insecure regions. At the same time, our food systems are responsible for about 30% of greenhouse gas emissions.

Current food systems also threaten the health of people and the planet and generate unsustainable levels of pollution and waste. One third of food produced globally is either lost or wasted. Addressing food loss and waste is critical to improving food and nutrition security, as well as helping to meet climate goals and reduce stress on the environment.

Risks associated with poor diets are also the leading cause of death worldwide. Millions of people are either not eating enough or eating the wrong types of food, resulting in a  double burden of malnutrition  that can lead to illnesses and health crises. Food insecurity can worsen diet quality and increase the risk of various forms of malnutrition, potentially leading to undernutrition as well as people being overweight and obese. An estimated 3 billion people in the world cannot afford a healthy diet.

Last Updated: Mar 15, 2024

The World Bank Group provides knowledge, advice, and financial resources in low- and middle-income countries to transform food systems to reduce poverty and achieve green, resilient, and inclusive development.

Our work in food and agriculture focuses on: 

• Food and nutrition security , where we work with efforts to share information, and to rapidly provide resources where they are needed, while helping countries design the long-term reforms needed to build resilient food and nutrition systems.
• Climate-smart agriculture by working with client governments to provide solutions that address global climate priorities, while recognizing national contexts and development objectives.
• Data-driven digital agriculture by expand the frontier of financing and expertise for digital agriculture.
• Mobilizing capital for development in agriculture & food . We identify and leverage growth areas for productive investments, focusing on innovation and impact. And we design projects to ensure that financing boosts sustainable productivity gains, reaches smallholders and SMEs, and creates jobs to end poverty and hunger.
• Public policy and expenditure by working with governments to facilitate the adoption of more sustainable approaches, technologies, and practices, alongside policies that promote public and private sector investment.
• Sustainable and health diets to ensure that food can support a healthy population.

For fiscal year 2024, a total of $2.98 billion in new IBRD/IDA commitments to agriculture and related sectors are being delivered. Around half of this investment will directly support climate action.

 As part of a comprehensive, global response to the food and nutrition crises, the World Bank is scaling up its responses , making $45 billion available in 90 countries. Our intervention is expected to benefit 335 million people, equivalent to 44% of the number of undernourished people. More than half of the beneficiaries are women, who are disproportionately affected by the crisis. It includes both short term interventions such as expanding social protection, also longer-term resilience such as boosting productivity and climate-smart agriculture. The World Bank has also included food and nutriton security as part of the global challenges that it will address at scale.

Increasingly, the Bank supports country efforts to transform their food systems by taking a holistic look at public policies and spending for agriculture and food. A Multi-Donor Trust Fund,  Food Systems 2030 , provides a platform for change in this area.

In Angola, a project  co-financed by the World Bank and the French Agency for Development, contributed to the government economic diversification agenda by supporting the transition from subsistence to a more market-oriented, competitive agriculture sector. The project is helping producers or small and medium enterprises prepare and finance agriculture investments. As of December 2023, 268 projects have been approved, equivalent to about $37 million in agriculture investment. The project funded the first partial credit guarantees scheme ever dedicated to the agriculture sector in Angola – an innovation for the country’s agribusiness sector – mobilizing so far $4.1 million in private bank financing. 

In  Argentina , the Bank supported 14,630 families who benefited from better socioeconomic inclusion. Under the project, 2,409 families accessed water for human and animal consumption, also irrigation; 7,499 rural families improved their productive capacity; and over 900 families accessed infrastructure, equipment and training that improved their marketing. Based on the model of productive alliances, 2,801 families from different regions became beneficiaries by linking their production with the markets. Among the funded activities, the production of honey, orchards, forage, livestock, nuts, spices, yerba mate and tea, among others, stand out.

In Benin, between 2011-2021, the Agricultural Productivity and Diversification Project facilitated the adoption of productivity-enhancing technologies for 327,503 crop producers, leading to 135,549 hectares of land cultivated with improved technologies. The project interventions resulted in increased yields from 0.45 ton to 0.81 ton for cashew; from 1.2 tons to 2.97 tons for maize, from 4 tons to 6.2 tons for rice, and from 50 tons to 70 tons for pineapple. The project led to significant increases of milled rice and fish output. Combined with support for crop production and processing, support to exports has led to increases in the export of cashew and pineapple.

For the past 18 years, Bolivia has been developing a strategy to improve agricultural production and marketing through the productive alliances model. This model links small rural producers with markets, and facilitates their participation in value chains, and access to technical assistance and technology for better market access. Currently, over 2,600 productive alliances have been implemented, benefiting 107,308 producer families. In 2023, the third phase of productive alliances model was launched, expecting to have a significant impact on nearly 130, 000 rural producer’s communities, with a focus on food security, adoption of innovative practices for resilient agriculture and the increased participation of women producers.

A Bank-supported project implemented in partnership with the Government of Rio Grande do Norte, one of Brazil's poorest and most violent states, has aimed to improve agricultural productivity, the quality of and access to health, public security, education and public sector management across the state. The project has implemented 131 subprojects in family farming, renovated 274km of roads, renovated and strengthened the safety of an important dam, and built 22 modern, multi-service Citizen Centers.

In Bhutan,  a project  is supporting the government's efforts to reduce rural poverty and malnutrition through climate-smart agriculture. Irrigation technology and greenhouses introduced through the project have helped farmers to increase their access to local and export markets. More than 6,500 people have increased the quality and quantity of produce like rice, maize, potato, vegetables, quinoa, citrus, apples, and potatoes, as well as high-value spices such as cardamom and ginger. 

In Burkina Faso, the Bank supported the Burkina Faso Livestock Sector Development Project which ran from 2017 to 2022. By project completion, beneficiaries among selected value chains increased their yield by 8.4%. Yield increase for cattle, sheep, and egg production reached 6.76%, 11.93%, and 6.50%, respectively. Sales increased by 45% exceeding the target of a 30% increase. The volume of loans granted by partner financial institutions reached $5.02 million, exceeding the original target of $4.38 million. The project reached a total of 329,000 beneficiaries, out of which 138,314 were women and 112,573 were youth.

In the Central African Republic, through the Emergency Food Security Response project, 330,000 smallholder farmers received seeds, farming tools, and training in agricultural and post-harvest techniques. The project helped farmers boost their crop production and become more resilient to climate and conflict risks. Local food production increased by 250%, from 28,000 tons in September 2022 to 73,000 tons in June 2023. Moreover, 21,006 agricultural households received training on post-harvest loss management and provided equipment, such as mobile storage units, to enhance packaging of agricultural products, leading to higher selling prices.

In  Colombia, since 2010, the adoption of environmentally friendly silvopastoral production systems  (SPS) for over 4,100 cattle ranches has converted 100,522 hectares of degraded pastures into more productive landscapes and captured 1,565,026 tons of CO2 equivalent. In addition, almost 40,000 hectares of pastureland were transformed to SPS and 4,640 hectares into intensive Silvopastoral Production Systems (iSPS). Moreover, 4,100 direct farmers beneficiaries, of which 17% were women, were trained in SPS and iSPS, and over 21,000 farmers, technicians and producers were also trained, visited demonstration farms, and participated in workshops and events and technology brigades. A network of 116 plant nurseries were also established, which produced around 3.1 million fodder trees that were delivered to beneficiary farmers. 

In Cote d’Ivoire, between 2013 and 2017, the Agriculture Sector Project  boosted the productivity of 200,000 farmers and rehabilitated 6,500 kilometers of rural roads allowing farmers to better transport their products  and reduce post-harvest losses. To aid the cashew industry, the Bank also supported a research program that helped disseminate 209 genotypes of high-performing trees and establish 18 nurseries. The Bank-financed project also helped leverage $27.5 million in private investment to boost productivity on at least 26,500 hectares.

In Ethiopia, since 2015 a project has helped 2.5 million smallholder farmers increase agricultural productivity and commercialization by establishing market linkages, increasing access to agricultural public services, building smallholder farmer capacity in efficient water and crop management to implement climate change mitigation and adaptation, and improving diet diversification. The project has also been promoting the use of nutrition sensitive agriculture and gender and climate-smart agriculture including dietary diversity through nutrient-dense crops, livestock products, post-harvest processing/handling and social behavioral change communication, along with food safety and child and maternal health. The project has supported farmers increase yield in crops and livestock by 19% and 52% respectively and their revenue by 96.2%. To date the project has also provided 58,823 hectares of land with irrigation and water related services, and over 1.6 million farmers have adopted improved agriculture technologies promoted by the project. Nearly one million jobs for rural people, including for women and youth in fragile and conflict affected areas have been created as a result of the project interventions.

In Grenada , the World Bank supported local farmers and fisherfolk, along with aggregators and agro-processors to enhance their access to markets and sales from 2017 to 2023 through the OECS Regional Agriculture Competitiveness Project. The project provided vouchers to 206 farmers and fisherfolk and offered co-financing opportunities for 10 agro-processors, leading to significant improvements in their production facilities and market access. Additionally, 260 employees and 53 extension workers received training, improving their skills in agricultural production and market reach. Through the project, 150 producers adopted various climate-smart technologies, such as solar panels and rainwater harvesting systems, underscoring the project's dedication to sustainability and efficiency.

In Guinea, from 2018 to 2023, through the  Guinea Integrated Agricultural Development Project , local farmers increased agriculture's productivity, and sustainability. To help local communities, the project disseminated high-yielding seeds, improve irrigation, and trained women and youth to access funds to create jobs. The project also promoted the use of climate-smart, gender-sensitive digital technologies with local producers. The project has reached 149,000 farmers (of whom 38% are women and 30% are youth). The project’s results include a 30% increase in yield of rice and maize; a 42% increase in commodity sales; a 47,470-hectare area covered by improved technologies; over 97,000 users of improved technologies, and more than 2,000 jobs created for women and youth.

In Haiti , a World Bank project strengthened the institutional capacity of Haiti’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development by accessing technologies to increase not only agricultural productivity and production but also improved livelihoods and resilience. The project developed irrigation and drainage on 2,244 hectares; established 115 farmer field schools, and trained facilitators in agricultural extension techniques. A total of 78,242 small producers increased their market access, half of whom were women; more than 3,368 private and public sector staff (including staff from the Ministry of Agriculture, municipal staff, among others) and 600 farmers were trained on surveillance and vaccination, the use of fruit fly traps, mealybugs control, and protection of animals against rabies and anthrax and more than 3.6 million animals were vaccinated.

In Honduras, since 2010 , 12,878 small farmers, of which 27% are women, have used productive alliances to improve productivity and access to markets, which has leveraged $33.5 million in finance from commercial banks and microfinance institutions. Under the project, gross sales of producer organizations rose by 25.3%. Also, support to Honduras’ Dry Corridor Alliance, has helped 12,202 households implement food security and agricultural business plans, and improved agricultural yields, nutrition, and food diversity of project beneficiaries.

In India, the  Assam Agribusiness and Rural Transformation Project  supported over 400,000 farm families and 1,270 businesses and over 100 of industry associations and producer organizations in improving their productivity and incomes and helping develop new marketing channels since 2017.

In  Kenya, since 2016,   1.5 million farmers , where over 60% are women, have increased their productivity , climate resilience and access to markets. The digital registry (including geo tagging) of these 1.5 million farmers enables them to access agro-weather and market advisories. In addition, the Bank is facilitating partnerships between the government and 26 ag-tech support agencies which enables almost 500,000 farmers to access a range of services (inputs, financial services and markets) by leveraging digital technologies.  

In Kosovo , the Bank provided 775 grants to farmers and 103 grants to agri-processors to increase production capacities and enhance market competitiveness in the livestock and horticulture sector. This was done through upgrading facilities, adopting new technologies, and introducing food safety and environmental standards. Further, support was provided for the rehabilitation of irrigation schemes covering an area of 7,750 hectares which had an impact on the production, yield, quality, and variety of products cultivated in the area.

In the Kyrgyz Republic, the Additional Financing to the Integrated Dairy Productivity Improvement Project is improving productivity through better technologies and breeds of dairy animals rather than increasing their numbers. The project provides training, artificial insemination services, and monitoring milk yields per cow and the quality of milk to processing companies. To date, 10,000 small farmers including 5,000 women farmers, have received training to enhance productivity and climate-smart agriculture. Over 13,000 cows received artificial insemination for breed improvement with positive pregnancy rate of 67.3% which is above the global average. With improved breeds of dairy animals, the market value of the crossbred calves is higher than local calves and the average milk yield per cow has increased by nearly 15%. The project has also established a digital tool to monitor milk quality which is being used by eight dairy processing companies. The project established 30 milk collection points through famers’ Jamaats that are equipped with refrigerated tanks and advanced testing equipment, strategically located to ensure consistent milk quality and timely delivery, especially during hot summers.

In Madagascar, since 2016 , the Bank has boosted the productivity of over 130,000 farmers. Sixty-thousand hectares of irrigated rice fields have been rehabilitated. The Bank also supported the cocoa sector through research, the development of certified seeds, and promotion of improved production and processing techniques. This allowed 4,000 cocoa producers to increase their incomes and increase production and export volumes by 50%. The Bank also financed the country’s largest land rights registration, facilitating the delivery of over 200,000 land certificates to farmers. 

In Mauritania, between 2016 and 2021, the intervention of the Sahel regional support project offered agricultural assets and services to more than 400,000 farmers/pastoralists, where nearly 30% are women. More than 1.9 million hectares of land under sustainable management practices, in addition to the construction of 133 vaccination parks and the realization of 118 water points (wells and boreholes) as well as other infrastructure of valorization and trade of animals were provided to agro-pastoralist communities. Additionally, from April 2023- June 2028, the Bank offered to support the  Agriculture Development and Innovation Support Project (PADISAM)  to improve land resources management and foster inclusive and sustainable commercial agriculture in selected areas of Mauritania. It is anticipated that by the end of the project, there will be 72,000 direct beneficiaries and about 5,000 Ha of land under sustainable landscape management practices.

Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the resulting spikes in wheat prices in 2022, the World Bank provided emergency support to several countries in the Middle East and North Africa to mitigate the negative socio-economic consequences on the poor and vulnerable. These emergency projects secured access to affordable bread for over 89 million people across the region. In Lebanon, a project ($150 million) has been financing wheat imports that supports universal access to affordable Arabic bread for over a year to 5.36 million people living in Lebanon, of which 1 million are Syrian, Palestinian, and other refugees. In Egypt, a project helped procure around 1.15 million metric tons of wheat – equivalent to at least a 2-month supply to cover the needs of 72 million vulnerable people. A project in In Tunisia procured 160,099 metric tons of soft wheat, equivalent to seven weeks of bread supply for a population of 12 million.

In Moldova, since 2012 , the Bank has helped more than 7,500 farmers gain access to local and regional high-value markets for fresh fruit and vegetables and boosted land productivity through the promotion of sustainable land management practices on 120,000 hectares of farmland.

In  Montenegro , the bank, through the Second Institutional Development and Agriculture Strengthening (MIDAS2), helped the government launch the very first Instrument for Pre-accession Assistance for Agriculture and Rural Development (IPARD)-like agro-environmental measure in a manner compliant with EU requirements, increasing the amount of meadows and pasture lands recorded in the Land Parcel Identification System (LPIS) from 13,600 hectares (ha) to 92,000 ha. The Bank has also supported almost 4,000 farmers working on orchards, vineyards, livestock and aromatic plants, 224 agro-processors, and 59 farmers working on processing on-farm complying with the European Union requirements for food safety and 278 agricultural households adopting agro-environmental measures, improving their competitiveness and sustainability.

In Morocco , the Strengthening Agri-food Value Chains Program for Results has financed the construction of the first modern regional wholesale market in Rabat, which will improve the distribution of agricultural products throughout the region, benefiting more than 4.6 million inhabitants. The program also financed the establishment of the male sterile Ceratite production center, which will enable citrus producers in the Souss-Massa and Berkane regions, which represent 52% of national citrus production and generate about 6 million working days per year, to protect their production from damage caused by the Mediterranean fruit fly. The program also enabled more than 1,000 agri-food SMEs to obtain sanitary approval after upgrading, leading to an increase in employment by almost 61%. The program co-financed more than 70 units of packaging, cold storage and processing, which leveraged about US$86 million as private investment and led to an overall increase in production value of around 34%.

In Niger , through  the Climate Smart Agriculture Support Project , the World Bank supported over 370,000 farmers, where 145,000 of whom are women. The farmers benefited from the project’s investments in small and large-scale irrigation, improved climate-smart agriculture, and sustainable land management practices. Over 154,000 hectares of land were developed with sustainable land management practices, and 4,400 hectares of cropland were brought under irrigation. In collaboration with the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics and FAO, the project promoted good agriculture practices through farmer led e-extension services and technical assistance. The project investments led to significant increases in agriculture productivity: yields of cowpea, millet, and sorghum increased by 169, 164, and 142 percent, respectively. The project also strengthened the national climate information system by building the capacity of the National Meteorology Department (the project installed 30 meteorological stations and 600 rain gauges). Through its support to the Sahel Regional Center for Hydro and Agrometeorology, the project strengthened the early warning systems of national institutes such as National Meteorology and the National Hydrology Directorate.

In Nigeria,  APPEALS Project   was designed to enhance agricultural productivity of small and medium scale farmers and improve value addition along priority value chains. Since 2017, the project has demonstrated 204 improved technologies to 93,000 farmers. Food crop production has surged, with 304,516 metric tons produced, representing 3.1% of the national output. Furthermore, the project has reached 61,171 farmers with processing assets to improve the quality of their produce. The project also trained 10,346 women and youth, including persons with disability, providing them with business, technical and life skills training, support to business planning and facilitation of business name registration, start-up grant to establish a commercially viable business, and mentorship to provide the beneficiaries with continued support from established agribusiness entrepreneurs. The project linked farmers to market through the facilitation of commercial partnerships resulting in a total of 327 business alliances with 147 off-takers already buying farmers’ produce across the 11 value chains, with a transaction worth of US$ 59.7 million. Similarly, the project has linked 200 agribusiness clusters to infrastructures which includes 55km rural farm access road, 75 aggregation and cottage processing centers, 102 solar-powered water intervention and energy supplies.

In Paraguay, since 2008, 20,863 farmers  increased their agricultural income by at least 30% and 18,951 adopted improved agricultural practices, boosting the productivity of their land.

In the  Philippines, since 2015 , the Bank helped raise rural incomes, enhance farm and fishery productivity, improve market access and mainstream institutional and operational reforms, as well as science-based planning for agricultural commodities in 81 provinces. The project has benefitted a total of 323,501 people–46% of them women–with farm roads, irrigation, and agricultural enterprise projects, boosting incomes by up to 36%. 

In  Rwanda, since  2010, the Bank helped support over 410,000 farmers – half are women – in improving their agricultural production by developing over 7,400 hectares for marshland irrigation, providing hillside irrigation on over 2,500 hectares, and several hundreds of farmers benefitted matching grants to support their investments in Farmer-Led Irrigation Development (FLID) technologies on over 1,200 hectares of their land. Interventions also included improving soil conservation and erosion on more than 39,000 hectares of hillside. Maize, rice, beans, and potato yields have all more than doubled and around 2.5 tons of vegetables are exported to Europe and the Middle-East every week from intervention areas, or locally, where more horticulture produce is sold to premium markets including 5-star hotels or the national airline, RwandAir. Less than two years after  one of the Bank supported projects  introduced greenhouse farming in its intervention areas to minimize the impacts of unfavorable weather conditions and better manage crop pests and diseases, by 2023, the demand for these technologies has seen a rapid increase in these areas and 132 units have been acquired and installed through the matching grants program under the project. Evidence shows relatively high revenues for farmers investing in greenhouse technology, with revenues increasing up to 15 times for vegetable growers.

Since 2019, the ongoing Serbia Competitive Agriculture Project has been supporting the government economic diversification and competitiveness agenda for small and medium scale farmers and their participation in a more market-oriented agriculture sector. The productive alliance model supported by the project has contributed to the improvement of the agri-food market linkages of 823 farmers, of which 330 are women farmers. Through the project, 4,356 farmers have received technical assistance to prepare their business ideas and plans (1,307 are women), while 1,319 business plans have received support in various forms, such as matching grants, technical assistance, and business development support. The farmers have signed their loans with commercial banks to invest in farm innovations, including equipment, on-farm irrigation, digital agriculture, climate-smart agriculture technologies. By providing co-financing with EUR 24.17 million in matching grants, the project-supported business plans have leveraged an additional EUR 24.17 million in private capital so far, including commercial loans to farmers at market interest rate from 11 local banks, and cash contributions from the beneficiary farmers. Amongst them, 1,117 beneficiary farmers are first-time users of credit.

In  Tajikistan , the Bank supported the establishment of 545 farmer groups in horticulture value chains, specifically apricot, apple, pear, lemon, cucumber, and tomato, and dairy value chain benefiting a total of 13,516 farmers out of which 48% were women. The Bank also supported the establishment of 342 productive partnerships benefitting 4,340 smallholder farmers. A total of 21,882 beneficiaries achieved an increase in commercial activity. The project supported training for 13, 516 farmers, on value chain development.

In  Tunisia, the Bank helped 113 remote rural villages improve  land management practices on 37,000 hectares of land to increase productivity and improve 930 kilometers of rural roads serving some 160 villages. 

In  Uruguay, since 2014, climate-smart agriculture techniques  have been adopted on 2.7 million hectares and adopted by 5,541 farmers, providing for a carbon sequestration potential of up to 9 million tons of CO2 annually.

In Uganda, since 2015 , the  Agriculture Cluster Development Project’s e-voucher scheme has leveraged over $12 million of farmer investments enabling over 450,000 farm households access and use improved agro-inputs resulting in higher farm yields. Provision of matching grants has enhanced storage capacity by 55,000MT, acquiring value addition equipment and machinery thereby facilitating Producer Organizations to add value and undertake collective marketing. Additional infrastructure support addressing road chokes has also led to improved market access.

The Bank has also made investments into strengthening regulatory and administrative functions of the Ministry of Agriculture through the development of IT Platforms and tools facilitating timely planning and decision making.

In the Uganda Multi-Sectoral Food and Nutrition Security Project, the Bank has supported enhanced knowledge on nutrition resulting in improved household nutrition and incomes for 1.55 million direct project beneficiaries.

In Uzbekistan, the Horticulture Development Project has helped create, 34,520 jobs, including 13,124 for women; increase beneficiary productivity by 24% and profitability by 124%, including through entry into new export markets. The  Livestock Sector Development Project  supported a sub-loans benefitting 560 large scale commercial livestock farmers, and a total of 135 value chain development projects benefiting 1,456 smallholder farmers (Dekhans). As a result, the share of improved and high yielding livestock breeds increased by 98.7%; increasing milk and meat productivity by 33% and 38% respectively. The Ferghana Valley Rural Enterprise Project has supported the establishment and operation of nine business incubation hubs in Andijan, Namangan, and Ferghana regions, to support local entrepreneurs in business plan preparation, and facilitated access to finance, technology infusion, also organized training among 5,000 project initiators in 36 districts of Ferghana Valley. The project, under its credit line activities, financed a total of 501 investment sub-projects with $119.6 million of the project fund, of which 77.8% were for small business entrepreneurs This created substantial number of new jobs, and increased the incomes of rural enterprises,

In Vietnam, since 2010, the Bank has promoted sustainable livelihoods by helping develop 9,000 “common interest groups” comprising over 15,500 households and partnering them with agricultural enterprises. The Bank also helped  over 20,000 farmers  improve their livestock production and benefited an additional 130,000 people through capacity building in food safety. 

Under the  West African Agricultural Productivity Program , the Bank supported a research and development effort that promoted technology generation, dissemination, and support to local farming systems in 13  ECOWAS  countries. The project reached over 2.7 million beneficiaries, 41% of whom were women. It also generated 112 technologies that reached over 1,850,000 hectares.

The Yemen Food Security Response and Resilience Project has directly benefited over 1 million beneficiaries to date. The project is focusing on resilience building amidst protracted crisis – including conflict, insecurity, and climate-related shocks. The project has created around 20,000 short-term jobs and benefited over 50,000 smallholder farm households through various agricultural infrastructure improvements. The project invested in the vaccination of 11 million small ruminants and treated a similar number for parasites. In addition to building resilience, as a short-term response, the project supported 20,000 vulnerable households with kitchen gardens and livestock kits, business development training and start-up grants to vulnerable women. Furthermore, the project facilitated a supplemental feeding program for over 740,000 most vulnerable beneficiaries.

Last Updated: Apr 09, 2024

The World Bank works with a range of partners to achieve ambitious development goals: transforming food systems, boosting food security and empowering smallholder farmers, to realize zero hunger and poverty by 2030. 

The World Bank Group is a joint convener, with the G7 Presidency, of the Global Alliance for Food Security (GAFS) . A key outcome of the Global Alliance is the  Global Food and Nutrition Security Dashboard , a key tool to fast-track a rapid response to the unfolding global food security crisis, designed to consolidate and present up-to-date data on food crisis severity, track global food security financing, and make available global and country-level research and analysis to improve coordination of the policy and financial response to the crisis.

The Bank hosts a  Multi-Donor Trust Fund,  Food Systems 2030 , that helps countries build better food systems, fostering healthy people, a healthy planet and healthy economies. The Trust Fund aims to deliver improved livelihoods and affordable, and nutritious diets for all, and progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals of zero poverty and hunger by 2030 and the climate goals of the Paris Agreement. Food Systems 2030 provides advice and analytical products to underpin policy options, funds to pilot innovative approaches, and information to build support for change in different country contexts. It engages with the private sector by supporting the design, piloting and de-risking of innovative public-private partnerships that advance development and climate goals.   

The  Global Agriculture and Food Security Program , a multilateral financing platform, is dedicated to improving food and nutrition security worldwide. Launched by the  G20 in the wake of the global response to the 2007–08 food price crisis, GAFSP works to build sustainable and resilient agriculture and food systems in the world’s poorest and most vulnerable countries. Since its inception in 2010, the Program has mobilized more than US$2 billion in donor funds to reach more than 16.6 million people. GAFSP provides financial and technical resources – investment grants, technical assistance, concessional finance, and advisory services – to demand-driven projects along the food chain to accelerate the transformation of food systems at scale.

The World Bank leads the  Food Systems, Land use and Restoration Global Platform (FOLUR) , financed by the Global Environment Facility, in partnership with UNDP, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the Global Landscapes Forum and the Food and Land-use Coalition. FOLUR is a $345 million, seven-year program that aims to improve the health and sustainability of landscapes that produce the world’s food. FOLUR targets sustainable production landscapes in 27 country projects for eight major commodities (livestock, cocoa, coffee, maize, palm oil, rice, soy, and wheat).

The World Bank chairs the System Council of  CGIAR , a global partnership that advances cutting-edge science to reduce rural poverty, increase food security, improve human health and nutrition, and ensure sustainable management of natural resources.

For more information, contact Clare Murphy-McGreevey on [email protected].

Last Updated: Sep 19, 2023

AROUND THE BANK GROUP

Find out what the Bank Group's branches are doing on Agriculture.

STAY CONNECTED

CGIAR Global Agricultural Research

CGIAR advances cutting-edge science to reduce rural poverty, increase food security, improve human health and nutrition, and ensure the sustainable management of natural resources.

Food Systems 2030

Food Systems 2030 is an Umbrella Multi-Donor Trust Fund that helps countries build better food systems by 2030. Food Systems 2030 helps countries rethink and transform their food systems from farm to fork, progressing ...

Global Agriculture and Food Security Program

The Global Agriculture and Food Security Program (GAFSP) finances investments that increase incomes and improve food and nutrition security in developing countries.

Forum for Agricultural Risk Management in Development

The Forum for Agricultural Risk Management in Development (FARMD) is a knowledge platform that provides information and best practices on agricultural risk management.

Additional Resources

Media inquiries.

This site uses cookies to optimize functionality and give you the best possible experience. If you continue to navigate this website beyond this page, cookies will be placed on your browser. To learn more about cookies, click here .

Every print subscription comes with full digital access

Science News

Agriculture.

How powdered rock could help slow climate change

A method called enhanced rock weathering shows promise at capturing carbon dioxide from the air. But verifying the carbon removal is a challenge.

50 years ago, scientists ID’d a threat to California wine country

Mixing up root microbes can boost tea’s flavor, more stories in agriculture.

Could a rice-meat hybrid be what’s for dinner?

A hybrid food that combines rice, animal cells and fish gelatin could one day be a more sustainable way to produce meat.

Berkley Walker wants to revamp photosynthesis for a changing climate

Finding ways to make plants work better could help feed a growing population, especially as the planet warms.

Camouflaging wheat with a wheat smell could be a new approach to pest control

Wheat fields coated in wheat germ oil confuse the noses of mice, reducing seed loss by more than 60 percent, a new study finds.

50 years ago, flesh-eating screwworms pushed scientists to mass produce flies

"Fly factories” dreamed up in the early 1970s have helped North and Central America keep screwworms in check for decades.

Martian soil may have all the nutrients rice needs

Experiments hint that in the future, we might be able to grow the staple food in the soils of the Red Planet.

Dry farming could help agriculture in the western U.S. amid climate change

Some farmers in the western United States are forgoing irrigation, which can save on water and produce more flavorful fruits and vegetables.

Indigenous people may have created the Amazon’s ‘dark earth’ on purpose

Modern Amazonians make nutrient-rich soil from ash, food scraps and burns. The soil strongly resembles ancient dark soils found in the region.

How fungi make potent toxins that can contaminate food

Genetically engineering Aspergillus fungi to delete certain proteins stops the production of mycotoxins that can be dangerous to human health.

A new seasoning smells like meat thanks to sugar — and mealworms

A spoonful of sugars could help cooked mealworms go down more easily, a potential boon for the planet.

Subscribers, enter your e-mail address for full access to the Science News archives and digital editions.

Not a subscriber? Become one now .

Agriculture

The Dairy Industry Must Act Faster to Keep H5N1 from Starting a Human Epidemic

H5N1 is running rampant through dairy cows, putting humans at risk of an epidemic

Kay Russo, Michelle Kromm, Carol Cardona

Avocado Farms Aren’t Sustainable Now, but They Could Be

Avocados are marketed as a superfood, but growing them for an expanding world market has turned a rural Mexican state into an unsustainable monoculture

Viridiana Hernández Fernández, The Conversation US

How Bird Flu Caught the Dairy Industry Off Guard

Understanding how avian influenza jumped into cows can help shape the path to stopping the virus’s spread

Meghan Bartels

Florida’s Beef with Lab-Grown Meat Is Evidence-Free

Lobbyists’ and politicians’ campaigns against lab-grown meat appeal to emotion, not logic and reason

Allison Parshall

Bird Flu Is Spreading in Cows. Here’s What That Means for Milk

H5N1 influenza virus particles have been detected in commercially sold milk, but it’s not clear how the virus is spreading in cattle or whether their milk could infect humans

Julian Nowogrodzki, Nature magazine

NASA’s Artemis Astronauts Will Help Grow Crops on the Moon—And Much More

When astronauts return to the moon later this decade, they’ll bring along science experiments to study moonquakes, lunar water ice and extraterrestrial agriculture

Robin George Andrews

‘Opportunity Crops’ Could Boost Nutrition across Africa

Cary Fowler, the U.S. State Department’s leading figure on global hunger, explains a new way to improve nutritious food supply

Richard Schiffman

CRISPR Will Likely Not Solve Bird Flu

New research shows that CRISPR, the gene editing technique, could make chickens more resistant to bird flu. But its use raises many ethical and scientific issues

Carol Cardona, Michelle Kromm

Is Raw-Milk Cheese Safe to Eat?

Recent bacterial outbreaks from consuming cheese made from unpasteurized milk, or “raw milk,” raise questions about the safety of eating these artisanal products

Riis Williams

Farmers in Crisis, Long Overlooked, Are Finally Getting Mental Health Support

Amid a mounting mental health crisis among farmers, experts are working to make help more accessible

Anna Mattson

How to Make Urban Agriculture More Climate-Friendly

The process of growing fruits and vegetables in cities can emit more carbon than conventional farming

Joanna Thompson

Adapting Crops for Extreme Weather

Do wild varieties of overlooked grains, fruits and vegetables hold the key to developing more resilient agriculture?

Lourdes Medrano, Undark

When you choose to publish with PLOS, your research makes an impact. Make your work accessible to all, without restrictions, and accelerate scientific discovery with options like preprints and published peer review that make your work more Open.

• PLOS Biology
• PLOS Climate
• PLOS Complex Systems
• PLOS Computational Biology
• PLOS Digital Health
• PLOS Genetics
• PLOS Global Public Health
• PLOS Medicine
• PLOS Mental Health
• PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases
• PLOS Pathogens

PLOS Sustainability and Transformation

• PLOS Collections

Precision agriculture

PLOS publishes a broad range of Open interdisciplinary precision agriculture research that is essential to the wider understanding, advancement and adoption of precision agriculture practices and technology.

Discover precision agriculture research from PLOS

PLOS’ precision agriculture research explores and assesses the very latest agricultural technologies. Whether in controlled environments or directly in the field, our research highlights new methods and technologies for agricultural surveillance and intervention, such as sensors and chemical testing, or high-tech farm machinery and machine learning that measures, analyses, and improves crop yield, soil quality, and animal husbandry practices.

These efforts are fundamental to guaranteeing food security and sustainable crop production in the context of rising demand and increasingly challenging farming environments.

Stay up-to-date on precision agriculture research from PLOS

Research spotlights

As a leading publisher in the field, these articles showcase research that has influenced academia, industry and/or policy.

Role of biotechnology in creating sustainable agriculture

Maize yield in smallholder agriculture system—An approach integrating socio-economic and crop management factors

Forecasting severe grape downy mildew attacks using machine learning

Precision agriculture research topics.

PLOS publishes research across a broad range of topics. Take a look at the latest work in your field.

Data visualization

Digital soil mapping

Food security

Genetic engineering

Internet of Things (IoT)

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV)

Machine learning

Remote sensing

Robotic systems

Sustainable agriculture

Further environmental science reading and insights

PLOS publishes a broad range of inter-disciplinary research in environmental science, spanning multiple journals, disciplines, and regions. Uncover further curated research and insights in the following fields:

Impacts of hazards

Read the latest research developments in your field

Study the latest insights, technologies, and strategies that are shaping the global agricultural landscape and helping drive sustainable, efficient farming practices.

A meta-analysis of the adoption of agricultural technology in Sub-Saharan Africa

A multi-omics approach to solving problems in plant disease ecology

An embedded system for the automated generation of labeled plant images to enable machine learning applications in agriculture

Estimation of forage biomass and vegetation cover in grasslands using UAV imagery

Fruit classification using attention-based MobileNetV2 for industrial applications

Harnessing digital technology to improve agricultural productivity?

Pheno4D: A spatio-temporal dataset of maize and tomato plant point clouds for phenotyping and advanced plant analysis

Browse the full PLOS portfolio of Open Access precision agriculture articles

14,898 authors from 131 countries chose  PLOS   to publish their precision agriculture research* 

Reaching a global audience, this research has received over 4,000   news and blog mentions ^ , research in this field has been cited 80,259 times after authors published in a plos journal*, related plos research collections.

Covering a connected body of work and evaluated by leading experts in their respective fields, our Collections make it easier to delve deeper into specific research topics from across the breadth of the PLOS portfolio.

Check out our highlighted PLOS research Collections:

Future Crops

Plant Phenomics and Precision Agriculture

Sustainable Cropping

Stay up-to-date on the latest precision agriculture research from PLOS

Related journals in precision agriculture

We provide a platform for precision agriculture research across various PLOS journals, allowing interdisciplinary researchers to examine smart farming techniques through various academic lenses, enabling a more collaborative and holistic understanding of precision agriculture worldwide.

*Data source: Web of Science . © Copyright Clarivate 2023 | January 2004 – December 2023 ^Data source: Altmetric.com | January 2004 – December 2023

Breaking boundaries. Empowering researchers. Opening science.

PLOS is a nonprofit, Open Access publisher empowering researchers to accelerate progress in science and medicine by leading a transformation in research communication.

Open Access

All PLOS journals are fully Open Access, which means the latest published research is immediately available for all to learn from, share, and reuse with attribution. No subscription fees, no delays, no barriers.

Leading responsibly

PLOS is working to eliminate financial barriers to Open Access publishing, facilitate diversity and broad participation of voices in knowledge-sharing, and ensure inclusive policies shape our journals. We’re committed to openness and transparency, whether it’s peer review, our data policy, or sharing our annual financial statement with the community.

Breaking boundaries in Open Science

We push the boundaries of “Open” to create a more equitable system of scientific knowledge and understanding. All PLOS articles are backed by our Data Availability policy, and encourage the sharing of preprints, code, protocols, and peer review reports so that readers get more context.

Interdisciplinary

PLOS journals publish research from every discipline across science and medicine and related social sciences. Many of our journals are interdisciplinary in nature to facilitate an exchange of knowledge across disciplines, encourage global collaboration, and influence policy and decision-making at all levels

Community expertise

Our Editorial Boards represent the full diversity of the research and researchers in the field. They work in partnership with expert peer reviewers to evaluate each manuscript against the highest methodological and ethical standards in the field.

Rigorous peer review

Our rigorous editorial screening and assessment process is made up of several stages. All PLOS journals use anonymous peer review by default, but we also offer authors and reviewers options to make the peer review process more transparent.

An official website of the United States government

Official websites use .gov A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS A lock ( Lock A locked padlock ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Research and Science

From fostering continued economic growth to adapting to the effects of climate change and addressing food security, the United States can continue to be a leader in global agriculture. Each day, the work of USDA scientists and researchers touches the lives of all Americans - from the farm field to the kitchen table and from the air we breathe to the energy that powers our country.

The challenges facing agriculture, natural resources, and conservation are immense and can be addressed through robust research enterprise and educational programs. USDA intramural and extramural science helps to protect, secure, and improve our food, agricultural and natural resources systems.

USDA Science and Research Strategy, 2023-2026: Cultivating Scientific Innovation

The “ USDA Science and Research Strategy, 2023-2026: Cultivating Scientific Innovation (PDF, 21.4 MB)” presents a near-term vision for transforming U.S. agriculture through science and innovation, and outlines USDA’s highest scientific priorities. The S&RS is a call to action for USDA partners, stakeholders, and customers to join the conversation and help identify innovative research strategies that lead to real-world, practical solutions that help farmers, producers, and communities thrive.

Learn more and engage below:

USDA Science and Research Strategy

AGARDA: A Vision for Disruptive Science to Confront Audacious Challenges

Agriculture Advanced Research and Development Authority (AGARDA) Implementation Strategy (PDF, 1.8 MB) is a framework outlining a new approach for delivering disruptive breakthrough discoveries for agriculture.

Strengthening Our Research System

USDA has refocused its science agencies to ensure the most effective and efficient use of its resources, while leveraging the strengths of our partners across the scientific community.

The Office of the Chief Scientist (OCS) coordinates USDA research, education and Extension with scientists and researchers across the federal government and university and private partners, to make the best use of taxpayer investments. In 2012, OCS continued focus on the Research, Education and Economics Action Plan (PDF, 486 KB) and identified seven priority research topics:

• Global Food Supply and Security
• Climate and Energy Needs
• Sustainable Use of Natural Resources
• Nutrition and Childhood Obesity
• Food Safety
• Education and Science Literacy
• Rural-urban Interdependence/Rural Prosperity

The Agricultural Research Service (ARS) conducts research to develop and transfer solutions to agricultural problems of high national priority.

The Economic Research Service (ERS) , through science-based economic research and analysis, informs public policy and other decisions about agriculture, food, rural development, and environmental challenges.

The National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) conducts hundreds of surveys every year and prepares reports covering virtually every aspect of U.S. agriculture.

The National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) supports research, education and Extension programs in the Land-Grant University System and other partner organizations.

Enhancing the Productivity of American Agriculture and Ensuring the Safety of our Food Supply

USDA invests in research, development, and outreach of new varieties and technologies to mitigate animal/plant diseases and increase productivity, sustainability, and product quality. USDA research has supported America's farmers and ranchers in their work to produce a safe and abundant food supply for over 100 years. This work has helped feed the nation and sustain an agricultural trade surplus since the 1960s.

An additional focus is to establish more sustainable systems that enhance crop and animal health. Our scientists and university partners have revealed the genetic blueprints of a host of plants and animals including the genomes of apples, pigs, and turkeys, and in 2012, they furthered understanding of the tomato, bean, wheat and barley genomes -- key drivers in developing the resilience of those crops to feed growing populations.

NASS has developed animated U.S. crop progress and topsoil moisture maps , along with other resources, to help experts assess farmland data. USDA researchers also created the Maize Genome Database, an important tool to help farmers improve traits in a crop vital to the world. Meeting growing global demand for food, fiber, and biofuel requires robust investment in agricultural research and development (R&D) from both public and private sectors. USDA is a leader in remote sensing and mapping to visualize data in support of agricultural policy and business decision making as well as program operation. We ranked first worldwide among research institutions publishing on priority diseases in animal health including salmonellosis, avian influenza , mycobacterial disease, coccidiosis, campylobacterosis, mastitis and others.

USDA conducts and supports science that informs decisions and policies contributing to a safe food supply and the reduction of foodborne hazards. Our scientists found the primary site where the virus that causes foot-and-mouth disease begins infection in cattle and developed an improved vaccine against the disease. They are also working on new strategies to control mites and other major honey bee problems such as colony collapse disorder .

Improving Nutrition and Confronting Obesity

USDA builds the evidence base for food-based and physical activity strategies and develops effective education activities to promote health and reduce malnutrition and obesity in children and high-risk populations. For example, ARS evaluated school characteristics associated with healthier or less healthy food preparation practices and offerings and found that the school nutrition environment could be improved by requiring food service managers to hold nutrition-related college degrees, pass a food service training program, and by participating in a school-based nutrition program such as USDA Team Nutrition .

USDA-supported science is investigating the causes of childhood obesity so that our country can address the epidemic. In these efforts, USDA supports nutrition education programs and encourages Americans to consume more nutritious foods like fruits and vegetables. Our scientists are part of an international team that has found a way to boost the nutritional value of broccoli, tomatoes and corn, and have worked to find ways to bolster the nutritional content of other staple crops like oats and rice. USDA research has supported these efforts, showing how healthy foods can often cost less than foods that are high in saturated fat, added sugar and/or sodium.

In 2013, USDA updated the national assessment of urban and rural food deserts - low-income areas with limited access to affordable and nutritious food - and provided information on the socioeconomic and demographic characteristics that distinguish food deserts from other areas, for decision-makers and stakeholders concerned about access to healthy foods.

Conserving Natural Resources and Combating Climate Change

USDA develops and delivers science-based knowledge that empowers farmers, foresters, ranchers, landowners, resource managers, policymakers, and Federal agencies to manage the risks, challenges, and opportunities of climate variability, and that informs decision-making and improves practices in environmental conservation.

Our scientists are developing rice and corn crops that are drought- and flood-resistant and helping to improve the productivity of soil, as well as production systems that require increasing smaller amounts of pesticides or none at all.

Vegetation indices contained in VegScape have proven useful for assessing crop condition and identifying the aerial extent of floods, drought, major weather anomalies, and vulnerabilities of early/late season crops. This tool allows users to monitor and track weather anomalies' effects on crops in near real time and compare this information to historical data on localized levels or across States.

Additionally, our researchers have examined the potential impacts of a suite of climate scenarios on U.S. crop production. Studies like these will help policymakers, farmers, industry leaders and others better understand and adapt to a changing climate on America's crop production.

Our researchers created i-Tree , urban forest management software to help cities understand the value of urban trees through carbon sequestration, erosion protection, energy conservation and water filtration, and since 2009 have continued building on the success of the tool and expanding its use. Our scientists are conducting research on uses of wood, helping companies meet green building design standards and creating jobs using forest products. We have also worked with Major League Baseball to reduce the occurrence of broken baseball bats.

USDA supports families managing through tough economic times by helping residents save energy at home and conserve water, with a program run by Cooperative Extension and our land-grant university partners. Cooperative Extension-affiliated volunteer monitoring programs have engaged citizens in water monitoring to better understand the effects of climate change and/or aquatic invasive species on local waters. Collectively, these programs interacted with hundreds of local, State, and Federal partners. The programs help citizens detect the presence of invasive species and harmful algal blooms.

Science Education and Extension

USDA recognizes the importance of recruiting, cultivating, and developing the next generation of scientists, leaders, and a highly skilled workforce for food, agriculture, natural resources, forestry, environmental systems, and life sciences.

The NIFA interagency agreement with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service leverages technology and innovation and involves youth in STEM outreach and exposure. Youth participants developed science process skills related to using GIS and research design, analyzing and interpreting data, and reporting findings to the community which has enabled them to become better consumers of science and citizens capable of making wise STEM policy choices.

USDA strives to provide effective research, education, and extension activities that inform public and private decision-making in support of rural and community development . NASS holds outreach events throughout the Census cycle with underserved and minority and disadvantaged farming groups to promote participation in the Census of Agriculture . With funding and support from NIFA, many Tribal Colleges are offering Reservation citizens training ranging from basic financial literacy to business start-up and marketing information so that families not only survive, but thrive.

In addition, the ERS Atlas of Rural and Small Town America brings together over 80 demographic, economic, and agricultural statistics for every county in all 50 states and assembles statistics in four broad categories -- people, jobs, agriculture, and geography.

Research and Science Centers and Databases

• Agricultural Network Information Center (AGNIC)
• Agricultural Online Access (AGRICOLA)
• Alternative Farming Systems Information Center (AFSIC)
• Animal Welfare Information Center (AWIC)
• Current Research Information Center (CRIS)
• Digital Desktop (DigiTop) for Employees
• Food and Nutrition Assistance Research Database
• Food and Nutrition Information Center
• Production, Supply and Distribution Online (PSD Online) Database
• Rural Information Center
• Water and Agricultural Information Center

Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education in the Field: A Proceedings (1991)

Chapter: introduction, introduction.

Charles M. Benbrook

These proceedings are based on a workshop that brought together scientists, farmer-innovators, policymakers, and interested members of the public for a progress report on sustainable agriculture research and education efforts across the United States. The workshop, which was held on April 3 and 4, 1990, in Washington, D.C., was sponsored by the Office of Science and Education of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Board on Agriculture of the National Research Council. The encouraging new science discussed there should convince nearly everyone of two facts.

First, the natural resource, economic, and food safety problems facing U.S. agriculture are diverse, dynamic, and often complex. Second, a common set of biological and ecological principles—when systematically embodied in cropping and livestock management systems—can bring improved economic and environmental performance within the reach of innovative farmers. Some people contend that this result is not a realistic expectation for U.S. agriculture. The evidence presented here does not support such a pessimistic assessment.

The report of the Board on Agriculture entitled Alternative Agriculture (National Research Council, 1989a) challenged everyone to rethink key components of conventional wisdom and contemporary scientific dogma. That report has provided encouragement and direction to those individuals and organizations striving toward more sustainable production systems, and it has provoked skeptics to articulate why they feel U.S. agriculture cannot—some even say should not—seriously contemplate the need for such change. The debate has been spirited and generally constructive.

Scholars, activists, professional critics, and analysts have participated in

this debate by writing papers and books, conducting research, and offering opinions about alternative and sustainable agriculture for over 10 years. Over the past decade, many terms and concepts have come and gone. Most people—and unfortunately, many farmers—have not gone very far beyond the confusion, frustration, and occasional demagoguery that swirls around the different definitions of alternative, low-input, organic, and sustainable agriculture.

Fortunately, though, beginning in late 1989, a broad cross-section of people has grown comfortable with the term sustainable agriculture. The May 21, 1990, issue of Time magazine, in an article on sustainable agriculture entitled “It's Ugly, But It Works” includes the following passage:

[A] growing corps of experts [are] urging farmers to adopt a new approach called sustainable agriculture. Once the term was synonymous with the dreaded O word—a farm-belt euphemism for trendy organic farming that uses no synthetic chemicals. But sustainable agriculture has blossomed into an effort to curb erosion by modifying plowing techniques and to protect water supplies by minimizing, if not eliminating, artificial fertilizers and pest controls.

Concern and ridicule in farm publications and during agribusiness meetings over the philosophical roots of low-input, sustainable, or organic farming have given way to more thoughtful appraisals of the ecological and biological foundations of practical, profitable, and sustainable farming systems. While consensus clearly does not yet exist on how to “fix” agriculture's contemporary problems, a constructive dialogue is now under way among a broad cross-section of individuals, both practitioners and technicians involved in a wide variety of specialties.

This new dialogue is powerful because of the people and ideas it is connecting. Change will come slowly, however. Critical comments in some farm magazines will persist, and research and on-farm experimentation will not always lead to the hoped for insights or breakthroughs. Some systems that now appear to be sustainable will encounter unexpected production problems. Nonetheless, progress will be made.

The Board on Agriculture believes that over the next several decades significant progress can and will be made toward more profitable, resource-conserving, and environmentally prudent farming systems. Rural areas of the United States could become safer, more diverse, and aesthetically pleasing places to live. Farming could, as a result, become a more rewarding profession, both economically and through stewardship of the nation's soil and water resources. Change will be made possible; and it will be driven by new scientific knowledge, novel on-farm management tools and approaches, and economic necessity. The policy reforms adopted in the 1990 farm bill, and ongoing efforts to incorporate environmental objectives

into farm policy, may also in time make a significant difference in reshaping the economic environment in which on-farm management decisions are made.

This volume presents an array of new knowledge and insight about the functioning of agricultural systems that will provide the managerial and technological foundations for improved farming practices and systems. Examples of the research projects under way around the country are described. Through exploration of the practical experiences, recent findings, and insights of these researchers, the papers and discussions presented in this volume should demonstrate the value of field- and farm-level systems-based research that is designed and conducted with ongoing input from farmer-innovators.

Some discussion of the basic concepts that guide sustainable agriculture research and education activities may be useful. Definitions of key terms, such as sustainable agriculture, alternative agriculture, and low-input sustainable agriculture, are drawn from Alternative Agriculture and a recent paper (Benbrook and Cook, 1990).

BASIC CONCEPTS AND OPERATIONAL DEFINITIONS

Basic concepts.

Sustainable agriculture, which is a goal rather than a distinct set of practices, is a system of food and fiber production that

improves the underlying productivity of natural resources and cropping systems so that farmers can meet increasing levels of demand in concert with population and economic growth;

produces food that is safe, wholesome, and nutritious and that promotes human well-being;

ensures an adequate net farm income to support an acceptable standard of living for farmers while also underwriting the annual investments needed to improve progressively the productivity of soil, water, and other resources; and

complies with community norms and meets social expectations.

Other similar definitions could be cited, but there is now a general consensus regarding the essential elements of sustainable agriculture. Various definitions place differing degrees of emphasis on certain aspects, but a common set of core features is now found in nearly all definitions.

While sustainable agriculture is an inherently dynamic concept, alternative agriculture is the process of on-farm innovation that strives toward the goal of sustainable agriculture. Alternative agriculture encompasses efforts by farmers to develop more efficient production systems, as well as

efforts by researchers to explore the biological and ecological foundations of agricultural productivity.

The challenges inherent in striving toward sustainability are clearly dynamic. The production of adequate food on a sustainable basis will become more difficult if demographers are correct in their estimates that the global population will not stabilize before it reaches 11 billion or 12 billion in the middle of the twenty-first century. The sustainability challenge and what must be done to meet it range in nature from a single farm field, to the scale of an individual farm as an enterprise, to the food and fiber needs of a region or country, and finally to the world as a whole.

A comprehensive definition of sustainability must include physical, biological, and socioeconomic components. The continued viability of a farming system can be threatened by problems that arise within any one of these components. Farmers are often confronted with choices and sacrifices because of seemingly unavoidable trade-offs—an investment in a conservation system may improve soil and water quality but may sacrifice near-term economic performance. Diversification may increase the efficiency of resource use and bring within reach certain biological benefits, yet it may require additional machinery and a more stable and versatile labor supply. Indeed, agricultural researchers and those who design and administer farm policy must seek ways to alleviate seemingly unwelcome trade-offs by developing new knowledge and technology and, when warranted, new policies.

Operational Definitions

Sustainable agriculture is the production of food and fiber using a system that increases the inherent productive capacity of natural and biological resources in step with demand. At the same time, it must allow farmers to earn adequate profits, provide consumers with wholesome, safe food, and minimize adverse impacts on the environment.

As defined in our report, alternative agriculture is any system of food or fiber production that systematically pursues the following goals (National Research Council, 1989a):

more thorough incorporation of natural processes such as nutrient cycling, nitrogen fixation, and beneficial pest-predator relationships into the agricultural production process;

reduction in the use of off-farm inputs with the greatest potential to harm the environment or the health of farmers and consumers;

productive use of the biological and genetic potential of plant and animal species;

improvement in the match between cropping patterns and the productive potential and physical limitations of agricultural lands; and

profitable and efficient production with emphasis on improved farm management, prevention of animal disease, optimal integration of livestock and cropping enterprises, and conservation of soil, water, energy, and biological resources.

Conventional agriculture is the predominant farming practices, methods, and systems used in a region. Conventional agriculture varies over time and according to soil, climatic, and other environmental factors. Moreover, many conventional practices and methods are fully sustainable when pursued or applied properly and will continue to play integral roles in future farming systems.

Low-input sustainable agriculture (LISA) systems strive to achieve sustainability by incorporating biologically based practices that indirectly result in lessened reliance on purchased agrichemical inputs. The goal of LISA systems is improved profitability and environmental performance through systems that reduce pest pressure, efficiently manage nutrients, and comprehensively conserve resources.

Successful LISA systems are founded on practices that enhance the efficiency of resource use and limit pest pressures in a sustainable way. The operational goal of LISA should not, as a matter of first principles, be viewed as a reduction in the use of pesticides and fertilizers. Higher yields, lower per unit production costs, and lessened reliance on agrichemicals in intensive agricultural systems are, however, often among the positive outcomes of the successful adoption of LISA systems. But in much of the Third World an increased level of certain agrichemical and fertilizer inputs will be very helpful if not essential to achieve sustainability. For example, the phosphorous-starved pastures in the humid tropics will continue to suffer severe erosion and degradation in soil physical properties until soil fertility levels are restored and more vigorous plant growth provides protection from rain and sun.

Farmers are continuously modifying farming systems whenever opportunities arise for increasing productivity or profits. Management decisions are not made just in the context of one goal or concern but in the context of the overall performance of the farm and take into account many variables: prices, policy, available resources, climatic conditions, and implications for risk and uncertainty.

A necessary step in carrying out comparative assessments of conventional and alternative farming systems is to understand the differences between farming practices, farming methods, and farming systems. It is somewhat easier, then, to determine what a conventional practice, method, or system is and how an alternative or sustainable practice, method, or system might or should differ from a conventional one. The following definitions are drawn from the Glossary of Alternative Agriculture (National Research Council, 1989a).

A farming practice is a way of carrying out a discrete farming task such as a tillage operation, particular pesticide application technology, or single conservation practice. Most important farming operations—preparing a seedbed, controlling weeds and erosion, or maintaining soil fertility, for example—require a combination of practices, or a method. Most farming operations can be carried out by different methods, each of which can be accomplished by several unique combinations of different practices. The manner in which a practice is carried out—the speed and depth of a tillage operation, for example—can markedly alter its consequences.

A farming method is a systematic way to accomplish a specific farming objective by integrating a number of practices. A discrete method is needed for each essential farming task, such as preparing a seedbed and planting a crop, sustaining soil fertility, managing irrigation, collecting and disposing of manure, controlling pests, and preventing animal diseases.

A farming system is the overall approach used in crop or livestock production, often derived from a farmer's goals, values, knowledge, available technologies, and economic opportunities. A farming system influences, and is in turn defined by, the choice of methods and practices used to produce a crop or care for animals.

In practice, farmers are constantly adjusting cropping systems in an effort to improve a farm's performance. Changes in management practices generally lead to a complex set of results—some positive, others negative—all of which occur over different time scales.

The transition to more sustainable agriculture systems may, for many farmers, require some short-term sacrifices in economic performance in order to prepare the physical resource and biological ecosystem base needed for long-term improvement in both economic and environmental performance. As a result, some say that practices essential to progress toward sustainable agriculture are not economically viable and are unlikely to take hold on the farm (Marten, 1989). Their contention may prove correct, given current farm policies and the contemporary inclination to accept contemporary, short-term economic challenges as inviolate. Nonetheless, one question lingers: What is the alternative to sustainable agriculture?

PUBLIC POLICY AND RESEARCH IN SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE

Farmers, conservationists, consumers, and political leaders share an intense interest in the sustainability of agricultural production systems. This interest is heightened by growing recognition of the successes achieved by innovative farmers across the country who are discovering alternative agriculture practices and methods that improve a farm's economic and environmental performance. Ongoing experimental efforts on the farm, by no

means universally successful, are being subjected to rigorous scientific investigation. New insights should help farmers become even more effective stewards of natural resources and produce food that is consistently free of man-made or natural contaminants that may pose health risks.

The major challenge for U.S. agriculture in the 1990s will be to strike a balance between near-term economic performance and long-term ecological and food safety imperatives. As recommended in Alternative Agriculture (National Research Council, 1989a), public policies in the 1990s should, at a minimum, no longer penalize farmers who are committed to resource protection or those who are trying to make progress toward sustainability. Sustainability will always remain a goal to strive toward, and alternative agriculture systems will continuously evolve as a means to this end. Policy can and must play an integral role in this process.

If sustainability emerges as a principal farm and environmental policy goal, the design and assessment of agricultural policies will become more complex. Trade-offs, and hence choices, will become more explicit between near-term economic performance and enhancement of the long-term biological and physical factors that can contribute to soil and water resource productivity.

Drawing on expertise in several disciplines, policy analysts will be compelled to assess more insightfully the complex interactions that link a farm's economic, ecological, and environmental performance. It is hoped that political leaders will, as a result, recognize the importance of unraveling conflicts among policy goals and more aggressively seizing opportunities to advance the productivity and sustainability of U.S. agriculture.

A few examples may help clarify how adopting the concept of sustainability as a policy goal complicates the identification of cause-and-effect relationships and, hence, the design of remedial policies.

When a farmer is pushed toward bankruptcy by falling crop prices, a farm operation can become financially unsustainable. When crop losses mount because of pest pressure or a lack of soil nutrients, however, the farming system still becomes unsustainable financially, but for a different reason. In the former example, economic forces beyond any individual farmer's control are the clear cause; in the latter case the underlying cause is rooted in the biological management and performance of the farming system.

The biological and economic performance of a farming system can, in turn, unravel for several different reasons. Consider an example involving a particular farm that is enrolled each year in the U.S. Department of Agriculture's commodity price support programs. To maintain eligibility for government subsidies on a continuing basis, the farmer understands the importance of growing a certain minimum (base) acreage of the same crop each year. Hence, the cropping pattern on this farm is likely to lead to a

buildup in soilborne pathogens that attack plant roots and reduce yields. As a result, the farmer might resort to the use of a fumigant to control the pathogens, but the pesticide might become ineffective because of steadily worsening microbial degradation of the fumigant, or a pesticide-resistant pathogen may emerge.

A solution to these new problems might be to speed up the registration of another pesticide that could be used, or relax regulatory standards so more new products can get registered, or both. Consider another possibility. A regulatory agency may cancel use of a fumigant a farmer has been relying upon because of food safety, water quality, or concerns about it effect on wildlife. The farmer might then seek a change in grading standards or an increase in commodity prices or program benefits if alternative pesticides are more costly.

Each of these problems is distinctive when viewed in isolation and could be attacked through a number of changes in policy. The most cost-effective solution, however, will prove elusive unless the biology of the whole system is perceptively evaluated. For this reason, in the policy arena, just as on the farm, it is critical to know what the problem is that warrants intervention and what the root causes of the problem really are.

Research Challenges

In thinking through agricultural research priorities, it should be acknowledged that the crossroads where the sciences of agriculture and ecology meet remain largely undefined, yet clearly promising. There is too little information to specify in detail the features of a truly sustainable agriculture system, yet there is enough information to recognize the merit in striving toward sustainability in a more systematic way.

The capacity of current research programs and institutions to carry out such work is suspect (see Investing in Research [National Research Council, 1989b]). It also remains uncertain whether current policies and programs that were designed in the 1930s or earlier to serve a different set of farmer needs can effectively bring about the types of changes needed to improve ecological management on the modern farm.

In the 1980s, the research community reached consensus on the diagnosis of many of agriculture's contemporary ills; it may take most of the 1990s to agree on cures, and it will take at least another decade to get them into place. Those who are eager for a quick fix or who are just impatient are bound to be chronically frustrated by the slow rate of change.

Another important caution deserves emphasis. The “silver bullet” approach to solving agricultural production problems offers little promise for providing an understanding of the ecological and biological bases of sustainable agriculture. The one-on-one syndrome seeks to discover a new

pesticide for each pest, a new plant variety when a new strain of rust evolves, or a new nitrogen management method when nitrate contamination of drinking water becomes a pressing social concern. This reductionist approach reflects the inclination in the past to focus scientific and technological attention on products and outcomes rather than processes and on overcoming symptoms rather than eliminating causes. This must be changed if research aimed at making agriculture more sustainable is to move ahead at the rate possible given the new tools available to agricultural scientists.

One area of research in particular—biotechnology—will benefit from a shift in focus toward understanding the biology and ecology underlying agricultural systems. Biotechnology research tools make possible powerful new approaches in unraveling biological interactions and other natural processes at the molecular and cellular levels, thus shedding vital new light on ecological interactions with a degree of precision previously unimagined in the biological sciences. However, rather than using these new tools to advance knowledge about the functioning of systems as a first order of priority, emphasis is increasingly placed on discovering products to solve specific production problems or elucidating the mode of action of specific products.

This is regrettable for several reasons. A chance to decipher the physiological basis of sustainable agriculture systems is being put off. The payoff from focusing on products is also likely to be disappointing. The current widespread pattern of failure and consolidation within the agricultural biotechnology industry suggests that biotechnology is not yet mature enough as a science to reliably discover, refine, and commercialize product-based technologies. Products from biotechnology are inevitable, but a necessary first step must be to generate more in-depth understanding of biological processes, cycles, and interactions.

Perhaps the greatest potential of biotechnology lies in the design and on-farm application of more efficient, stable, and profitable cropping and livestock management systems. For farmers to use such systems successfully, they will need access to a range of new information and diagnostic and analytical techniques that can be used on a real-time basis to make agronomic and animal husbandry judgments about how to optimize the efficiencies of the processes and interactions that underlie plant and animal growth.

Knowledge, in combination with both conventional and novel inputs, will be deployed much more systematically to avoid soil nutrient or animal nutrition-related limits on growth; to ensure that diseases and pests do not become serious enough to warrant the excessive use of costly or hazardous pesticides; to increase the realistically attainable annual level of energy flows independent of purchased inputs within agroecosystems; and to maximize a range of functional symbiotic relationships between soil micro-

and macrofauna, plants, and animals. Discrete goals will include pathogen-suppressive soils, enhanced rotation effects, pest suppression by populations of plant-associated microorganisms, nutrient cycling and renewal, the optimization of general resistance mechanisms in plants by cultural practices, and much more effective soil and water conservation systems that benefit from changes in the stability of soil aggregates and the capacity of soils to absorb and hold moisture.

Because of the profound changes needed to create and instill this new knowledge and skills on the farm, the recommendations in Alternative Agriculture (National Research Council, 1989a) emphasize the need to expand systems-based applied research, on-farm experimentation utilizing farmers as research collaborators, and novel extension education strategies—the very goals of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's LISA program.

Future research efforts—and not just those funded through LISA—should place a premium on the application of ecological principles in the multidisciplinary study of farming system performance. A diversity of approaches in researching and designing innovative farming systems will ensure broad-based progress, particularly if farmers are actively engaged in the research enterprise.

Benbrook, C., and J. Cook. 1990. Striving toward sustainability: A framework to guide on-farm innovation, research, and policy analysis. Speech presented at the 1990 Pacific Northwest Symposium on Sustainable Agriculture, March 2.

Marten, J. 1989. Commentary: Will low-input rotations sustain your income? Farm Journal, Dec. 6.

National Research Council. 1989a. Alternative Agriculture. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.

National Research Council. 1989b. Investing in Research: A Proposal to Strengthen the Agricultural, Food, and Environmental System. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.

Interest is growing in sustainable agriculture, which involves the use of productive and profitable farming practices that take advantage of natural biological processes to conserve resources, reduce inputs, protect the environment, and enhance public health. Continuing research is helping to demonstrate the ways that many factors—economics, biology, policy, and tradition—interact in sustainable agriculture systems.

This book contains the proceedings of a workshop on the findings of a broad range of research projects funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The areas of study, such as integrated pest management, alternative cropping and tillage systems, and comparisons with more conventional approaches, are essential to developing and adopting profitable and sustainable farming systems.

READ FREE ONLINE

Welcome to OpenBook!

You're looking at OpenBook, NAP.edu's online reading room since 1999. Based on feedback from you, our users, we've made some improvements that make it easier than ever to read thousands of publications on our website.

Do you want to take a quick tour of the OpenBook's features?

Show this book's table of contents , where you can jump to any chapter by name.

...or use these buttons to go back to the previous chapter or skip to the next one.

Jump up to the previous page or down to the next one. Also, you can type in a page number and press Enter to go directly to that page in the book.

Switch between the Original Pages , where you can read the report as it appeared in print, and Text Pages for the web version, where you can highlight and search the text.

To search the entire text of this book, type in your search term here and press Enter .

Share a link to this book page on your preferred social network or via email.

View our suggested citation for this chapter.

Ready to take your reading offline? Click here to buy this book in print or download it as a free PDF, if available.

Get Email Updates

Do you enjoy reading reports from the Academies online for free ? Sign up for email notifications and we'll let you know about new publications in your areas of interest when they're released.

The Development of Agriculture

The development of agricultural about 12,000 years ago changed the way humans lived. They switched from nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyles to permanent settlements and farming.

Social Studies, World History

Loading ...

The Farming Revolution Taking root around 12,000 years ago, agriculture triggered such a change in society and the way in which people lived that its development has been dubbed the “ Neolithic Revolution.” Traditional hunter-gatherer lifestyles, followed by humans since their evolution, were swept aside in favor of permanent settlements and a reliable food supply. Out of agriculture, cities and civilizations grew, and because crops and animals could now be farmed to meet demand, the global population rocketed—from some five million people 10,000 years ago, to eight billion today.

There was no single factor, or combination of factors, that led people to take up farming in different parts of the world. In the Near East , for example, it’s thought that climatic changes at the end of the last ice age brought seasonal conditions that favored annual plants like wild cereals . Elsewhere, such as in East Asia, increased pressure on natural food resources may have forced people to find homegrown solutions. But whatever the reasons for its independent origins, farming sowed the seeds for the modern age.

Plant Domestication

The wild progenitors of crops including wheat ( Triticum aestivum ), barley ( Hordeum vulgare ), and peas ( Lathyrus oleraceus ) are traced to the Near East region. Cereals were grown in Syria as long as 9,000 years ago, while figs ( Ficus carica ) were cultivated even earlier; prehistoric seedless fruits discovered in the Jordan Valley suggest fig trees were being planted some 11,300 years ago. Though the transition from wild harvesting was gradual, the switch from a nomadic to a settled way of life is marked by the appearance of early Neolithic villages with homes equipped with grinding stones for processing grain.

The origins of rice and millet farming date to the same Neolithic period in China. The world’s oldest known rice paddy fields, discovered in eastern China in 2007, reveal evidence of ancient cultivation techniques such as flood and fire control.

In Mexico, squash cultivation began around 10,000 years ago, but corn ( maize ) had to wait for natural genetic mutations to be selected for in its wild ancestor, teosinte. While maize -like plants derived from teosinte appear to have been cultivated at least 9,000 years ago, the first directly dated corn cob dates only to around 5,500 years ago.

Corn later reached North America, where cultivated sunflowers ( Helianthus annuus ) also started to bloom some 5,000 years ago. This is also when potato ( Solanum tuberosum ) growing in the Andes region of South America began.

Farmed Animals

Cattle ( Bos taurus ), goats ( Capra hircus ), sheep ( Ovis aries ), and pigs ( Sus domesticus ) all have their origins as farmed animals in the so-called Fertile Crescent , a region covering eastern Turkey, Iraq, and southwestern Iran. This region kick-started the Neolithic Revolution. Dates for the domestication of these animals range from between 13,000 to 10,000 years ago.

Genetic studies show that goats and other livestock accompanied the westward spread of agriculture into Europe, helping to revolutionize Stone Age society. While the extent to which farmers themselves migrated west remains a subject of debate, the dramatic impact of dairy farming on Europeans is clearly stamped in their DNA. Prior to the arrival of domestic cattle in Europe, prehistoric populations weren’t able to stomach raw cow milk. But at some point during the spread of farming into southeastern Europe, a mutation occurred for lactose tolerance that increased in frequency through natural selection thanks to the nourishing benefits of milk. Judging from the prevalence of the milk-drinking gene in Europeans today—as high as 90 percent in populations of northern countries such as Sweden—the vast majority are descended from cow herders.

Media Credits

The audio, illustrations, photos, and videos are credited beneath the media asset, except for promotional images, which generally link to another page that contains the media credit. The Rights Holder for media is the person or group credited.

Production Managers

Program specialists, last updated.

January 5, 2024

User Permissions

For information on user permissions, please read our Terms of Service. If you have questions about how to cite anything on our website in your project or classroom presentation, please contact your teacher. They will best know the preferred format. When you reach out to them, you will need the page title, URL, and the date you accessed the resource.

If a media asset is downloadable, a download button appears in the corner of the media viewer. If no button appears, you cannot download or save the media.

Text on this page is printable and can be used according to our Terms of Service .

Interactives

Any interactives on this page can only be played while you are visiting our website. You cannot download interactives.

Related Resources

Official websites use .gov A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS A lock ( ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Animal Health and Welfare

Selected resources on  humane animal care (e.g.,  proper nutrition, housing, and environment, as well as, prevention of pain, suffering, disease, and disability), laws and regulations and certificate programs.

Farms and Agricultural Production Systems

Information on sustainable and organic farming, hydroponics, aquaculture,  irrigation and urban agriculture, as well as farm ownership and heirs' property.

Human Nutrition and Food Safety

Information on various nutrition and food safety topics including food security, nutrient composition, food defense, and local food systems.

Natural Resources, Conservation, and Environment

Topics relating to the environment, including, weather and climate change, conservation practices, environmental justice, invasive species and soil.

Plant Production and Gardening

Community and container gardening, raised beds, seeds and plants, specialty and cover crops, growing vegetables, medicinal herbs and more.

Rural Development and Communities

Resources on community development; environmental justice, rural funding, sustainable rural communities, and links to past and present USDA rural development collections.

Economics, Business, and Trade

Information about agricultural subsidies, funding for farms and businesses, trade policy, food waste and more with these agricultural marketing and trade resources.

Agricultural Research and Development: How to Grow Enough Food for Everyone With the Least Carbon Emissions

New report "growing green" analyzes the environmental benefits of public research and development.

• Share via Twitter
• Share via Facebook
• Share via Email

Executive Summary

The 20th century was a time of massive changes in US agriculture. From farmers scraping a living out of the land to running multi-thousand-acre operations. From cowboys and cattle drives to feedlots. From horse-drawn plows to GPS-guided tractors. Altogether, US agriculture became larger, more export-oriented, and much more efficient.

These transformations produced abundant food, allowed huge swaths of the population to escape the drudgery of farm labor, and enabled the economic growth that has undergirded modern American life. Not everyone benefited equally: many small- and mid-scale farmers had little choice but to sell their operations. Yet the benefits of agricultural modernization—not only economic but also environmental—have been unprecedented. Growth in agricultural productivity has reduced food prices; cut the carbon footprint of milk, chicken, beef, and many other products; reduced land use; and led to more efficient use of many resources.

This modern miracle of agricultural abundance owes much to over a century of public funding for agricultural research and development (R&D).

But after years of steady growth, public agricultural R&D funding in the United States is waning. The United States no longer leads the world in public agricultural R&D funding. Falling R&D investment threatens to forfeit the advantages and benefits of agricultural advancements in the face of increasing global competition and new threats, such as climate change, geopolitical strife, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Increasing federal R&D funding can maintain, if not increase, the competitiveness of US farmers while representing one of the greatest opportunities to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture, reduce land use, and keep food prices low around the world.

This report begins with a brief history of US agricultural transformations before painting a broad picture of US public agricultural research agencies and capacity. We find that public agricultural R&D investment has declined by one-third, in real dollars, since 2000 and has fallen as a portion of total US R&D investment. While private agricultural R&D has increased, it tends to focus more on commercial opportunities and less on long-term, productivity-enhancing research.

Subsequently, we describe how public agricultural R&D has had significant climate and environmental benefits. As farm yields increased over the 20th century, less land was required to produce the same quantity of food, fiber, and other agricultural products. For example, if US corn yields had remained stagnant from 1961 to 2020, corn farmers would have needed additional land the size of France to produce the same total amount of corn in 2020. Although yield gains in that period were partially due to greater use of fertilizer, fuel, and other energy-intensive farm inputs, the carbon footprint of key agricultural goods declined.

R&D-driven productivity growth can continue to generate large environmental benefits in the future. A new analysis commissioned by the Breakthrough Institute projects that doubling public US agricultural R&D spending would reduce global emissions by 213 million metric tons of carbon dioxide-equivalent per year, corresponding to over one-third of current US agricultural emissions. This mitigation would cost about $12 per ton of abated emissions, less than many other climate policies, while generating other benefits such as increased domestic agricultural production and lower prices.

Given such benefits, Congress should at least double funding for agricultural R&D, bolstering well-established agencies such as the Agricultural Research Service and National Institute of Food and Agriculture, as well as expanding newer efforts such as the Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research and the Agriculture Advanced Research and Development Authority. Doing so would entail at least an additional $3.4 billion in annual funding. This additional support should be directed, in particular, toward areas that increase productivity and reduce agriculture’s carbon footprint while addressing other environmental concerns. These R&D priorities include livestock breeding; genetic engineering; developing crops with deeper roots that sequester more carbon; improving meat and dairy alternatives; and creating low-carbon fertilizers that generate less runoff.

Introduction

Technology has come to define US agricultural production. Tractors, sensors, GPS, energy-intensive fertilizers and other inputs, massive combines, and genetically modified seeds are almost a given on most American farms. Long gone are the days of nuclear families tending small plots. We are, instead, in the age of factories in the field Deborah Fitzgerald, Every Farm a Factory: The Industrial Ideal in American Agriculture (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001). —the long-run project of America’s agricultural and research institutions. The urge toward scale, rationalization, and industrialization of agriculture has been prominent among American agriculturalists for over a century, producing new political and ecological outcomes and an unprecedented abundance of foods.

US agriculture, even before the 20th century, attempted to create rational and technological solutions to the problems it faced. Nineteenth-century agricultural producers sought out new technologies, inputs, and practices to overcome nutrient deficiencies and soil depletion and meet the needs of a growing population. Ariel Ron, Grassroots Leviathan: Northern Agricultural Reform in the Slaveholding Republic (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020). Emily Pawley, The Nature of the Future: Agriculture, Science, and Capitalism in the Antebellum North (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020). After the emancipation of enslaved persons in the United States, labor costs forced producers to turn to technological solutions to problems once solved through cruel forced labor, at least in former slaveholding states.

The founding of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) in 1862—termed the People’s Department by its founding executive, President Abraham Lincoln—institutionalized the push to rationalize agricultural production under a federal agency. Roughly since then, the US federal government has been an active participant in developing the key knowledge, technologies, and practices that have undergirded agricultural productivity growth both in the United States and around the world.

Alongside the USDA, the United States’ land-grant and public universities have been key institutions for the development and improvement of US agriculture. Created by the Morrill Act of 1862, and subsequently expanded by multiple legislative acts, the United States’ land-grant and public universities were intended to drive economic growth through research and teaching in “agriculture and the mechanic arts.”

For agriculture, the land-grant universities (LGUs) have also played an extremely important role as sites of extension: where formal academic research is translated and dispersed to local and regional agricultural producers. Extension programs have also served to extend farmer- and producer-led innovations more widely. Farmers are, after all, famous tinkerers and innovators in their own right.

Today, land-grant and public institutions include major private universities such as Cornell University in the state of New York; large state schools such as the University of California, Berkeley; historically Black colleges and universities, such as the University of the District of Columbia; and tribal colleges, such as the University of North Carolina at Pembroke.

Over the course of the 20th century, US agriculture embraced technological progress in all forms. This led to many socioeconomic, environmental, and food price outcomes.

In 1900, 41 percent of the US workforce was employed in agriculture. Carolyn Dimitri, Anne Effland, and Neilson Conklin, The 20th Century Transformation of US Agriculture and Farm Policy, USDA Economic Research Service, June 2005, 2, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022050720000649. Farms were small, diversified, and incredibly labor-intensive. Alongside the large number of human workers, the turn-of-the-century American farm economy also utilized 21.6 million work animals. Dimitri et al., 20th Century Transformation, 6. By 1945, US agriculture as a share of the total workforce fell by more than half, to only 16 percent of the total labor force; and by the end of the century, agriculture employed less than 2 percent of US workers. Dimitri et al., 20th Century Transformation, 2.

As the percentage of the total US workforce employed in agriculture declined, so too did the number of farms. Dimitri et al., 20th Century Transformation, 4. James M. Macdonald and Robert A. Hoppe, Examining Consolidation in US Agriculture (Washington, DC: USDA Economic Research Service, 2018). The plethora of small, diversified farms was replaced by fewer but significantly larger and more specialized farms.

Over the same period, farm mechanization and high-quality chemical inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides drastically reduced the need for labor, both human and animal. In 1960, the number of working animals had decreased to only three million, or about 14 percent of the 1900 total, replaced by 4.7 million tractors. Dimitri et al., 20th Century Transformation, 6. Mechanization, chemical innovations, and other technological advances created economies of scale for agricultural production. Larger, more capitalized farms could produce much more per acre while incurring similar or sometimes lower expenses. Catherine Morrison Paul et al., “Scale Economies and Efficiency in US Agriculture: Are Traditional Farms History?,” Journal of Productivity Analysis 22 (2004): 185-205, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11123-004-7573-1.

Agricultural Productivity Growth and R&D Spending Have Slowed

The 20th century witnessed massive productivity growth in American farming. Especially in the decades following World War II, US agricultural productivity surged, often growing at rates faster than non-farm productivity.

While rapid productivity growth in US agriculture cannot be completely explained by long-run public support for agricultural research and development (R&D), it played a significant role. The creation of the USDA and the LGUs provided crucial infrastructure, technological dispersion, and innovation networks that fostered broad-scale technological progress in farming.

Over the past four decades, agricultural productivity growth has slowed significantly. Philip Pardey and Julian Alston, “Unpacking the Agricultural Black Box: The Rise and Fall of American Farm Productivity Growth,” Journal of Economic History 81, no. 1 (2021), https://doi.org/10.3886/E130481V1. Unfortunately, so too has US public sector spending on agricultural R&D. Matthew Clancy, Keith Fuglie, and Paul Heisey, “U.S. Agricultural R&D in an Era of Falling Public Funding,” USDA Economic Research Service, November 2016, https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2016/november/us-agricultural-r-d-in-an-era-of-falling-public-funding/.

In 1960, the United States was far and away the world leader in public agricultural R&D spending—accounting for 20 percent of global public funding in that area. Philip G. Pardey and Julian M. Alston, “The Drivers of US Agricultural Productivity Growth,” Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, 11-12, accessed July 2, 2022, https://www.kansascityfed.org/documents/7107/the-drivers-of-us-agricultural-productivity-growth.pdf. Since then, the United States has fallen behind. In 2015, the United States accounted for only 8.9 percent of global public R&D spending in agriculture, taking second place to China, with 14.5 percent. Pardey and Alston, “Drivers of US Agricultural Productivity Growth,” 12. This is due both to long-run slowing of the growth rate in US public agricultural R&D spending and higher growth rates in other countries, like China, which have increased public investment for strategic, food security, and economic reasons.

From its peak in 2002, US public spending on agricultural R&D, adjusted for inflation, fell by about a third to $5.16 billion in 2019, similar to the level of spending in the 1970s. Kelly P. Nelson and Keith Fuglie, “Investment in US Public Agricultural Research and Development Has Fallen by a Third Over Past Two Decades, Lags Major Trade Competitors,” USDA Economic Research Service, June 6, 2022, https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2022/june/investment-in-u-s-public-agricultural-research-and-development-has-fallen-by-a-third-over-past-two-decades-lags-major-trade-competitors/. Drops in state fund-ing for agricultural R&D made up about half of the inflation-adjusted decline. USDA and other non-federal R&D investment has also fallen precipitously, by 22 percent and 56 percent respectively, since their peaks in the early 2000s. Data shared with authors by Keith Fuglie, USDA Economic Research Service. Still, in 2019, USDA intramural and extramural R&D invest-ment was responsible for 64 percent of total public agricultural R&D, compared to 45 percent in 2002, signaling the relative slowdown of investment from state and other federal sources. Data shared with authors by Keith Fuglie, USDA Economic Research Service.

Private R&D spending on food and agriculture has vastly outpaced public R&D, despite the two sectors’ having different motivations and often different research priorities. Since 1950, the public share of US agricultural R&D spending went from 65.1 percent of total agricultural R&D spending in the country to 31.3 percent in 2017. Pardey and Alston, “Drivers of US Agricultural Productivity Growth,” 12.

Even in combination with private R&D spending, agricultural R&D as a share of total public and private US R&D spending declined by about a third from 1950 to 2015. Pardey and Alston, “Drivers of US Agricultural Productivity Growth,” 12.

Research Programs Today

The USDA remains the primary administrator of public agricultural R&D funding. Total funds allocated for US public agricultural R&D, including by the USDA, other federal agencies, state governments, and non-government funders, was $5.04 billion in 2019, the most recent year for which amounts are available. Graphic on funders and performers of US public agricultural research in 2019, in Nelson and Fuglie, “Investment in US Public Agricultural Research.” Of that total, the USDA administered $2.77 billion through the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), the Agricultural Research Service (ARS), and smaller agricultural R&D agencies and programs. Nelson and Fuglie, “Investment in US Public Agricultural Research.”

Among other activities, NIFA funds outside researchers at universities, private firms, and other institutions through several programs. Chief among those is the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI), which provides grants across priority areas such as plant health, animal production, bioenergy, and natural resources. NIFA also provides “capacity grants” on a formula basis to state and territorial institutions such as state agricultural experiment stations of land-grant universities established by the Morrill Act of 1862 and colleges of agriculture at historically Black colleges and universities established through the Morrill Act of 1890. Nelson and Fuglie, “Investment in US Public Agricultural Research.”

Two other NIFA programs are the Specialty Crop Research Initiative (SCRI) and the Organic Agriculture Research and Extension Initiative (OREI). NIFA also provides funding for the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education program and other smaller research initiatives.

The ARS, the USDA’s chief scientific in-house research agency, operates more than 90 research locations that cover 660 research projects. “About ARS,” USDA Agricultural Research Service, accessed May 18, 2022, https://www.ars.usda.gov/about... Its flagship research center, in Beltsville, Maryland, is one of the largest agricultural research facilities in the world. “Research,” USDA Agricultural Research Service, accessed July 5, 2022, https://www.ars.usda.gov/northeast-area/docs/systematics-research/research/. The ARS has historically been a major contributor to agricultural innovation and R&D more broadly. For example, the technology to manufacture penicillin at scale was discovered at an ARS laboratory in Peoria, Illinois, in the early 1940s. “Penicillin: Opening of an Era,” USDA Agricultural Research Service, accessed June 30, 2022, https://www.ars.usda.gov/midwe... ,-Mycotoxin%20 Prevention%20and&text=Penicillin%20was%20discovered%20in%201928,ability%20to%20kill%20 infectious%20bacteria.

Beyond NIFA and the ARS, other parts of the USDA are the Economic Research Service, which conducts economic research on trends and issues related to agriculture, and the National Agricultural Statistics Service, which collects and publishes agricultural statistics and other information on a regular basis. In addition, the 2018 Farm Bill authorized the USDA to establish a pilot Agriculture Advanced Research and Development Authority through the USDA Office of the Chief Scientist, but it has yet to be fully funded.

Other federal agencies fund agricultural R&D as well. These agencies include the National Science Foundation, which funds diverse research across agricultural and food topics, the National Institutes of Health, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Department of Defense, and the Department of Energy. In 2019, federal agencies besides the USDA funded about 9.5 percent, $481 million, of public agricultural R&D. Graphic on funders and performers of US public agricultural research in 2019, in Nelson and Fuglie, “Investment in US Public Agricultural Research.” The Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, for example, funds a minor amount of research into agricultural soil carbon sequestration, plant breeding, and other agricultural topics related to bioenergy and climate change mitigation. “ROOTS: Rhizosphere Observations Optimizing Terrestrial Sequestration,” ARPA-E, accessed June 7, 2022, https://arpa-e.energy.gov/technologies/programs/roots. “SMARTFARM: Systems for Monitoring and Analytics for Renewable Transportation Fuels from Agricultural Resources and Management,” ARPA-E, accessed June 7, 2022, https://arpa-e.energy.gov/technologies/programs/smartfarm.

State governments also play a role in funding public agricultural R&D through their own departments of agriculture, state agricultural schools, and other public universities. In 2019, state governments funded about 21 percent—$1.06 billion—of public agricultural R&D. Graphic on funders and performers of US public agricultural research in 2019, in Nelson and Fuglie, “Investment in US Public Agricultural Research.”

Other non-federal and non-state funding, such as from public-private partnerships and other cooperating institutions like universities that do not fall into the land-grant university categorization, is another source of agricultural R&D support. In the 2014 Farm Bill, the federal government established the Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research, a nonprofit organization partially funded by Congress, with the goal of creating connections among researchers, funders, and stakeholders to create public-private partnerships driving forward food and agriculture research. “About FFAR,” Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research, accessed July 5, 2022, https://foundationfar.org/about/. In 2019, non-state and non-federal public R&D investments totaled $741 million, or about 15 percent of total public agricultural R&D. Graphic on funders and performers of US public agricultural research in 2019, in Nelson and Fuglie, “Investment in US Public Agricultural Research.”

R&D Grows More Than Just the Farm Economy

Public agricultural R&D funding, by improving productivity, has broad economic benefits—aiding consumers, spurring development of new companies and industries, and making US agriculture more globally competitive. And yet, the immediate economic benefits have not been evenly dispersed among farmers. Productivity growth for highly capitalized and larger producers meant the crowding out of smaller, less-capitalized producers. Overall, this process has driven national economic growth by freeing up labor for non-agricultural sectors, but with collateral damage for those producers pushed out of farming. Kathryn Marie Dudley, Debt and Dispossession: Farm Loss in America’s Heartland (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000).

Still, a 2018 study found that every dollar spent on US agricultural R&D has, on average, generated $20 in benefits for consumers and the broader economy. Uris Lantz C. Baldos et al., “R&D Spending, Knowledge Capital, and Agricultural Productivity Growth: A Bayesian Approach,” American Journal of Agricultural Economics 101, no. 1 (2018): 291–310, https://doi.org/10.1093/ajae/aay039. To be sure, public agricultural R&D does not generate immediate returns; economists point to a long lag time between funding R&D and the innovation and economic benefits associated with that investment. Sun Ling Wang et al., “Public R&D, Private R&D, and US Agricultural Productivity Growth: Dynamic and Long-Run Relationships,” American Journal of Agricultural Economics 95, no. 5 (2013): 1287-93. Keith O. Fuglie and Paul W. Heisey, Economic Returns to Public Agricultural Research, USDA Economic Research Service, Economic Brief Number 10, September 2007, 3, https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/42826/11496_eb10_1_.pdf?v=7433.8. Nevertheless, a 2007 analysis of 27 studies found that public agricultural R&D as a whole generated returns ranging from 20 to 60 percent compared to the annual 3-4 percent rate of return for typical government securities at the time. Cited in Fuglie and Heisey, Economic Returns to Public Agricultural Research.

Private R&D, despite high social rates of return, has significantly lower private rates of return: the amount that a company or institution can make from patent licensing, selling technologies, or pursuing other commercialization strategies. Personal communication with Keith Fuglie, USDA Economic Research Service. Median and mean estimates for social returns to private R&D in the United States were reported in 2008 as being 45 percent, meaning that private research is about as beneficial to the broader economy as public R&D investment. Keith Fuglie and Paul Heisey, “Agricultural Research Sustains Productivity Growth and Earns High Returns,” USDA Economic Research Service, February 1, 2008, https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2008/february/agricultural-research-sustains-productivity-growth-and-earns-high-returns. But the fact that private rates of return are low has resulted in the underfunding of private R&D.

One of R&D’s chief economic benefits is its role in reducing food prices. Despite periods of high food inflation, commodity food prices have decreased dramatically over the past century as growth in agricultural productivity and food supply has outpaced growth in population and food demand. For example, from 1950 to 2008, each year the price of rice declined in real terms by 1.9 percent, wheat by 1.8 percent, soybeans by 1.6 percent, and corn by 2.3 percent. Julian M. Alston, Jason M. Beddow, and Philip G. Pardey, “Mendel Versus Malthus: Research, Productivity, and Food Prices in the Long Run,” University of Minnesota Department of Applied Economics, Staff Paper Series, 2009, 5.

The decline in public agricultural R&D funding in the last three decades is therefore doubly concerning. It has coincided with a slowdown both in agricultural productivity growth and in the decline of food prices. Low rates of R&D funding and productivity growth in the future could contribute to increases in global food prices if production does not keep pace with increasing global demand.

Environmental Benefits of US Agricultural R&D

The mechanization, rationalization, and consolidation of US agriculture are often seen as a major threat to local ecosystems, rural economies, and the global climate. The mainstream environmentalist position on large-scale, technological farming remains sharply critical.

This is not without reason. The US food system generates substantial water and air pollution; technological progress has made millions of farmers redundant and posed massive socioeconomic challenges to rural economies; agriculture remains a large greenhouse gas emitter with roughly 11 percent of all US greenhouse gas emissions stemming from agriculture in 2020; “Inventory of US Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks,” Environmental Protection Agency, updated April 14, 2022, https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/inventory-us-greenhouse-gas-emissions-and-sinks. and, counter to environmentalist aesthetics, agriculture has flattened out and made uniform vast swaths of American land.

However, contemporary criticism of American agriculture often fails to take into account the counterfactual.

Productivity Growth Has Limited Land Use and Greenhouse Gas Emissions

The 20th century was a century of agricultural productivity growth. US agricultural yields and overall productivity measures increased multifold. Total factor productivity (TFP), a measure of the value of agricultural production relative to all inputs used in agriculture, increased by 4.6-fold between 1910 and 2007. Pardey and Alston, “Drivers of US Agricultural Productivity Growth,” 5.

The 20th century’s increase in US agricultural TFP has been a boon for the climate. Despite the agricultural narrative of mainstream environmentalism and other alternative food critics, US agricultural productivity growth has reduced land use and thereby greenhouse gas emissions, habitat loss, and other environmental impacts associated with land-use change compared to a scenario in which the same level of food demand was met with less productive agriculture. For example, if corn yields had remained the same since 1960, the United States would need approximately 227 million acres to produce the same amount produced on about 82 million acres in 2020. Data retrieved from FAOStat, accessed July 6, 2022, https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#home. In other words, without growth in corn yields, additional cropland the size of France would be needed. Not including French overseas departments or territories.

In fact, productivity growth contributed to a decline in total agricultural land use since the second half of the 20th century. Between 1949 and 2012, the total acreage of US cropland for crops and pasture, grassland used for pasture, and forest land used for pasture declined by about a fifth, all while agricultural output increased by over twofold. Daniel P. Bigelow and Allison Borchers, Major Uses of Land in the United States, 2012, USDA Economic Research Service, August 2017, 5, https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/84880/eib-178. pdf?v=0. Sun Ling Wang et al., Agricultural Productivity Growth in the United States: Measurement, Trends, and Drivers, USDA Economic Research Service, July 2015, iii and 5, https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/45387/53417_err189.pdf?v=1703.2.

Productivity growth has also avoided even higher emissions from agriculture by reducing the emissions per unit of food produced. For example, since 1961, greenhouse gas emissions per pound of US beef declined by almost 35 percent. Data retrieved from FAOStat, accessed July 6, 2022, https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#home. Over the same period, the emissions intensity of rice production in the United States declined by 48 percent.

Public Agricultural R&D Drives Productivity Growth

Publicly funded agricultural R&D played an important role in the US agricultural productivity growth of the 20th century. The main driver of productivity growth is innovation. And the best driver of innovation, according to economists at the USDA Economic Research Service as well as the broader literature on innovation, is public research spending. Wang et al., Agricultural Productivity Growth in the United States, 38. Fred Block and Matthew Keller, State of Innovation: The US Government’s Role in Technology Development (New York: Routledge, 2011). Mariana Mazzucato, The Entrepreneurial State: Debunking Public vs. Private Sector Myths (London: Anthem Press, 2013).

Public agricultural R&D works to elucidate fundamental scientific questions that allow for long-run technological breakthroughs. The public sector also conducts important applied research in areas that the private sector lacks sufficient incentive to fund, such as climate change mitigation, natural resources, and other topics that have less potential for commercial success. Similarly, public research agencies are more likely to support high-risk research that has a lower chance of generating profits in the short term, like developing crops that sequester more carbon or fix nitrogen.

In the past decades, public funding for productivity-improving agricultural research has declined, potentially limiting the long-run productivity-improving knowledge produced by scientists in the public sector. Wang et al., Agricultural Productivity Growth in the United States, 45. Nelson and Fuglie, “Investment in US Public Agricultural Research.” Instead, public sector research funding has gone to programs focused on more local environmental impacts, food safety, and food security. Pardey and Alston, “Drivers of US Agricultural Productivity Growth,” 15. These are valuable research areas in and of themselves and must be funded, but should come in addition to productivity-related research, not at its expense.

Private sector R&D spending has dramatically increased in recent decades but can’t fill the gap created by the decline in public spending since the two sectors support fundamentally different types of activities. While private R&D often builds off and takes advantage of basic scientific findings from public research, much of the funding in private sector R&D focuses on products in established market areas and efforts like manufacturing technologies that give individual companies competitive advantages. John King, Andrew Toole, and Keith Fuglie, The Complementary Roles of the Public and the Private Sectors in US Agricultural Research and Development, USDA Economic Research Service, September 2012, 4, https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/42858/32186_eb19.pdf?v=0.

This is not to say that publicly and privately funded R&D efforts are at odds with one another, or that private R&D is not important or beneficial to productivity growth. In fact, public R&D is generally thought to complement or stimulate private research, Wang et al., Agricultural Productivity Growth in the United States, 40. putting productivity-improv-ing breakthroughs within reach for private firms that might otherwise avoid the high costs of knowledge creation. For example, USDA’s investment in chicken breeding in the middle of the 20th century, in partnership with private companies and producers, made possible significant breakthroughs in broiler chicken size and growth rate that were quickly adopted nationwide (see Case Study: The Chicken of Tomorrow).

Case Study: The Chicken of Tomorrow

In 1945, as World War II was coming to an end and a new era of mass consumption was just over the horizon, A & P Food Stores, one of the largest grocery store chains of its time, partnered with the USDA and an industry committee to sponsor a “Chicken of Tomorrow” competition aimed at breeding a chicken with more meat. H. L. Shrader, “The Chicken-of-Tomorrow Program: Its Influence on ‘Meat-Type’ Poultry Production,” Poultry Science 31, no. 1 (January 1952): 3-10, https://reader.elsevier.com/re... 013?token=66C2EEEDFD9162094C868F4F45EE70993246FABC7732B1695FAE0C103929D983AF5 2CD932409A8DA3BCF5D00783C4EDC&originRegion=us-east-1&originCreation=20220630195511. Over the following six years, state competitions were held in 42 states, and two national competitions were held in Delaware and Arkansas. The result was a heavier, faster-growing broiler chicken.

The winner of both national competitions was a hybrid between a New Hampshire and California Cornish chicken, bred by Charles Vantress of California. Until then, purebreds were preferred over hybrids due to producers’ fears of poor health in hybrids, but Vantress’s “Chicken of Tomorrow” quickly became a national standby for broiler chickens. They grew quickly and produced far more meat than the average purebred of the 1940s. The chicken industry quickly took up the Vantress Cross, and in short order, the purebred chicken was replaced by Vantress’s hybrid or some descendant of the cross.

Since the 1940s, American chicken consumption has skyrocketed, at least in part due to the “Chicken of Tomorrow.” Around the turn of the millennium, US chicken consumption outpaced beef for the first time and has since been the most consumed American meat.

While the growth of the broiler chicken industry and the success of the Vantress Cross have created prob-lems (antibiotic resistance and Avian flu risk, for starters), they have also proven a boon for the climate. Chicken’s meteoric rise has coincided with a decline in beef consumption since the mid-1970s. James Eales and Laurian Unnevehr, “Demand for Beef and Chicken Products: Separability and Structural Change,” American Journal of Agricultural Economics 70, no. 3 (1988): 521-32. If beef or pork, instead of chicken, were responsible for the growth in US meat consumption since the middle of the 20th century, total US agricultural emissions would have been significantly higher.

Case Study: B73 Corn

In 1972, the USDA Agricultural Research Service, alongside scientists at Iowa State University, released a new maize inbred line: B73. Since then, B73 has become a pivotal corn breed for American and global agriculture, contributing to the incredible increase in maize yields over the last half-century. According to Iowa State University, B73 “remains the basis for nearly all the seed-parent lines of corn used in the United States and throughout the temperate areas of the world.” Iowa State University, “Major Cultivar Releases by the ISU College of Agriculture and Life Sciences,” 17, https://www.iastatedigitalpress.com/farmreports/article/11508/galley/10849/view/.

In the years before B73 was developed and spread, ARS and other publicly funded organizations were significant contributors to plant-breeding efforts. Numerous important breeds of corn and other crops were produced, studied, and distributed through public experiment stations and land-grant universities. But, over the past half-century, public researchers have moved away from plant-breeding, to be replaced by private sector research and development and corporatized plant-breeding efforts. While private efforts have been successful in many ways, the drop-off in public sector breeding efforts has meant less capacity for innovation from within those seed companies that have taken up the task of breeding. Thomas Hoegemeyer, “History of the US Hybrid Corn Industry,” presented at University of Nebraska-Lincoln, n.d., http://imbgl.cropsci.illinois.edu/school/2014/11_THOMAS_HOEGEMEYER.pdf.

The success of B73 and the subsequent diminishing of US public plant-breeding capacity also serve as an important lesson for forward-looking policy. Lindsay Campbell, “America’s Public Plant Breeding Programs Are in Trouble,” Modern Farmer, August 19, 2020, https://modernfarmer.com/2020/08/americas-public-plant-breeding-programs-are-in-trouble/. Even in a field dominated by private sector R&D, such as plant breeding, public sector R&D can develop breakthroughs that benefit the entire industry. Whereas private sector technological breakthroughs are often siloed and protected as intellectual property, public R&D tends to produce open-access findings that can serve as the basis for even greater private breakthroughs. The public nature of B73 maize, for instance, enabled seed companies, large and small, to create vastly improved products.

Agricultural R&D is Climate Mitigation

Agricultural production accounts for about 10 percent of US greenhouse gas emissions and 12 percent of global emissions. EPA, “Inventory of US Greenhouse Gas Emissions.” “World Greenhouse Gas Emissions: 2019,” World Resources Institute, June 23, 2022, https://www.wri. org/data/world-greenhouse-gas-emissions-2019. R&D that targets enteric fermentation (a digestive process in cattle and other ruminants that generates methane emissions), nitrous oxide emissions from fertilizer use and other activities on cropland soil, manure management, carbon sequestration, and other areas could substantially reduce net US emissions.

US agricultural R&D can also reduce global emissions by increasing agricultural yields and thereby reducing the conversion of forest, grasslands, and other native vegetation to farmland. A 2018 World Resources Institute report estimated that increasing global crop and livestock yields at the same rate they have historically risen would avoid more land-use change and greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 than all other plausible food system changes combined. Without any improvements in productivity, meeting projected global food demand in 2050 “would entail clearing most of the world’s remaining forests, wiping out thousands more species, and releasing enough greenhouse gas emissions to exceed the 1.5°C and 2°C warming targets enshrined in the Paris Agreement—even if emissions from all other human activities were entirely eliminated.” Tim Searchinger et al., “Creating a Sustainable Food Future: Executive Summary (Synthesis),” World Resources Institute, December 2018, https://research.wri.org/wrr-food/executive-summary-synthesis. Yet increasing agricultural yields faces new challenges.

Climate change has decreased global yields for some important crops such as maize and soybeans. Cheikh Mbow et al., IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Land: Chapter 5, Food Security, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, https://www.ipcc.ch/srccl/chap... , Section 5.2.2.1. As temperatures rise, they are expected to be increasingly detrimental to crop productivity. Similarly, global livestock yields are likely to decline given heat and drought stress on animals in extensive systems. Mbow et al., IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Land: Chapter 5, Food Security, Section 5.2.2.2. In the United States, drought, heat stress, and other extreme weather events could reduce yields for both crops and livestock. “Climate Impacts on Agriculture and Food Supply,” Environmental Protection Agency, accessed June 12, 2022, https://climatechange.chicago.gov/climate-impacts/climate-impacts-agriculture-and-food-supply. These impacts threaten food security and risk triggering deforestation and other land-use change.

Agricultural research and development will be crucial to maintaining and increasing yields in the face of climate change, both diminishing the risk of climate-related food insecurity and reducing the overall greenhouse gas and land-use footprint of the global food system.

One recent study by economists at USDA ERS and Purdue University estimated that a $611 billion increase in worldwide publicly funded R&D during the period 2017 to 2050 would reduce greenhouse gas emissions from global agriculture by about 28 to 43 billion metric tons (Gt) carbon dioxide-equivalent (CO2e) by 2050, depending on how much R&D increases in developed vs. less developed countries. Keith Fuglie et al., “The R&D Cost of Climate Mitigation in Agriculture,” Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, 2022, https://doi.org/10.1002/aepp.13245. When combined with environmental and conservation policies aimed at curbing land use for agriculture and imposing stricter regulations on producers, such a policy is projected to reduce global agricultural emissions by as much as 28 percent, or 85 Gt CO2e, by 2050. In both cases, a productivity-enhancing research agenda can also help keep food prices low and reduce the costs of implementing environmental policies by ensuring land rents remain cheap. In all, the cost of carbon mitigation would be about $14 to 22 per ton CO2e for the first scenario and $19 per ton CO2e for the second. Fuglie et al., “R&D Cost of Climate Mitigation,” 14, Table 3.

A new analysis commissioned by the Breakthrough Institute estimates the land use and climate impacts of increasing public agricultural R&D specifically in the United States. Uris Baldos, “Investing in Public R&D for a Competitive and Sustainable US Agriculture,” Paper presented at the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association Annual Meeting, Anaheim, CA, July 31-August 2, 2022, https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/322242/files/22891.pdf. Roughly doubling US public agricultural R&D spending over ten years would, by increasing productivity, reduce global emissions by an average of 213 million metric tons CO2e per year. That is equivalent to over one-third of current US agricultural emissions. This would be highly cost-effective compared to many mitigation options: about $12 per metric ton CO2e per year (USD 2017). This relatively low value highlights how, compared to R&D in many other countries, US public R&D generates large positive spillovers, sharing knowledge with other countries that boosts their productivity as well. Despite a net present cost of about $86 billion, doubling R&D would have a net positive economic impact, generating about $174 billion in net present value by increasing US farm output.

While increasing US R&D spending would reduce land-use and greenhouse gas emissions globally, it would have the opposite effect domestically. This is because as US producers reap the productivity benefits of agricultural R&D, the price of American agricultural goods would decline, making them more competitive on the global market. This would lead to increases in domestic crop outputs and subsequently an expansion in agricultural lands. But domestic increases in agricultural land use and emissions do not offset declines in global agricultural lands, emissions, and food prices.

Overall, costs per ton abated from investing in agricultural R&D are significantly lower than for many other emissions mitigation strategies. Estimates for the marginal cost of abatement from agricultural R&D in developed economies consistently fall under $30 per ton CO2e abated. David B. Lobell, Uris Lantz C. Baldos, and Thomas W. Hertel, “Climate Adaptation as Mitigation: The Case of Agricultural Investments,” Environmental Research Letters 8, no. 1 (2013), https://doi. org/10.1088/1748-9326/8/1/015012. Carol Adaire Jones, Cynthia J. Nickerson, and Paul W. Heisey, “New Uses of Old Tools? Greenhouse Gas Mitigation with Agriculture Sector Policies,” Applied Economics Perspectives and Policy 35, no. 3 (2013): 423-24, https://doi.org/10.1093/aepp/ppt020. In contrast, many energy and transportation technologies such as zero-carbon synthetic fuels, direct air carbon capture, and hydrogen electrolysis have negligible or no mitigation potential at similar costs. Jamil Farbes, Ben Haley, and Ryan Jones, Marginal Abatement Cost Curves for US Net-Zero Energy Systems: A Systems Approach, Environmental Defense Fund, August 2021, 5-6, https://www.edf.org/sites/default/files/documents/MACC_2.0%20report_Evolved_EDF.pdf.

Policy Recommendations

Public agricultural R&D funding has been falling. While funding for federal agricultural R&D agencies increased in 2022 to just over $3.5 billion, total public funding for R&D—omitting funding for extension, education, and other activities that R&D agencies also engage in—is far below funding levels from the 1980s to 2000s, adjusting for inflation. Dan Blaustein-Rejto and Caroline Grunewald, “Federal Ag Innovation Funding Rose This Year, But Still Lags,” The Well News, May 13, 2022, https://www.thewellnews.com/opinions/federal-ag-innovation-funding-rose-this-year-but-still-lags/. Nelson and Fuglie, “Investment in US Public Agricultural Research.” In comparison, the Department of Energy’s budget for energy research, development, and deployment doubled from less than $4 billion in 2000 to about $8 billion in 2021. Colin Cunliff and Linh Nguyen, Energizing Innovation: Raising the Ambition for Federal Energy RD&D in Fiscal Year 2022, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, May 2021, 11, https://www2.itif.org/2021-energy-innovation-funding.pdf?_ga=2.56385262.431943967.1649460171-1206423861.1649460171. We recommend the following actions to address the decline in public agricultural R&D funding.

Double Research Funding

Given the large environmental and economic benefits of agricultural R&D, Congress should double the funding for major agricultural R&D agencies and programs. For the USDA’s largest research agencies, ARS and NIFA, this would result in a combined increase of about $3.4 billion per year over their 2022 budgets, with additional funding needed to offset inflation. Ag and Environment tab, “FY23 R&D Appropriations Dashboard,” American Association for the Advancement of Science, April 22, 2022, https://www.aaas.org/news/fy-2023-rd-appropriations-dashboard.

Doubling funding for the ARS would bring more investment to its work on agricultural productivity, adaptation, and environmental research. The ARS performs crucial productivity-focused research through multiple projects in labs across the United States. For example, its “Animal Production and Protection” and “Crop Production and Protection” program areas fund research into productivity growth, while its “Natural Resources and Sustainable Agricultural Systems” program area carries out research with direct environmental applications.

Similarly, doubling funding for NIFA’s Agriculture and Food Research Initiative from $445 million in 2022 to about $900 million annually would allow more researchers to tackle research questions aimed at improving agricultural yields in the face of climate change. There is already a clear demand for more research funding. In 2019, AFRI’s programs were able to fund only 47 percent of the highly ranked applications that its review committees recommended for funding. “Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) FY 2019 Annual Review,” USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture, 2, accessed July 7, 2022, https://www.nifa.usda.gov/sites/default/files/resource/AFRI%20Annual%20Review%20v2%202019%20text%20508%20final.pdf. Because AFRI funds researchers from a range of institutions—at universities, national laboratories, private institutions, and even businesses—its support helps to maintain a broad ecosystem of agricultural research.

Expanding funding for the Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research (FFAR) would also have significant benefits. The 2018 Farm Bill provided $185 million in funding over five years. Genevieve K. Croft, “2018 Farm Bill Primer: Agricultural Research and Extension,” Congressional Research Service, September 24, 2019, https://crsreports.congress.go... ,Congress%20receives%20the%20 strategic%20plan. For every dollar that FFAR spends on research, it must find matching investment from private sources, leveraging the impact of public funding. FFAR has matched every dollar of federal investment with an average $1.40 in private funds. Advancing Research, Partnership & Impact: 2021 Impact Report , Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research, 2, https://1r0ixf4416603ktoc7u7n6pe-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/FFAR-2021-Impact-Report.pdf. In addition, as much as a third of FFAR’s total research investment goes toward climate change mitigation and adaptation. Personal communication, Rose Barbuto, Crystal Strategies. Internal analysis, available upon request, indicates about 25% of FFAR spending from 2017 to 2021 was on projects with a climate change mitigation component. Because of FFAR’s role as a public-private initiative, it can also help build consensus across research institutions and align research priorities to avoid redundancies in public and private research.

Increasing R&D funding for the National Science Foundation, ARPA-E, and other agencies that fund agricultural R&D would also be beneficial. However, since agricultural R&D is a small part of their overall missions and budgets, additional funding would likely impact agriculture less than if it were provided to FFAR or to USDA agencies.

Fully Establish AgARDA

Standing up the Agriculture Advanced Research and Development Authority (AgARDA) would fill a critical research niche for the development of innovative technologies. AgARDA was authorized as a pilot initiative by the 2018 Farm Bill for $50 million per year in funding, Croft, “2018 Farm Bill Primer.” but has only received $1 million to date and has yet to establish a strategic plan. Blaustein-Rejto and Grunewald, “Federal Ag Innovation Funding.” Funding the program at its authorized level would allow AgARDA to begin acting as a legitimate research agency alongside the USDA’s main programs. AgARDA can support multiyear, high-risk and high-reward projects that are too risky for private investors and do not fit well into the research model of the ARS or AFRI, which prioritize lower-risk projects that reliably deliver incremental progress, or FFAR, which requires the private sector to be sufficiently interested in a project to provide matching funding.

AgARDA takes the existing ARPA programs—such as the Department of Defense’s DARPA and Department of Energy’s ARPA-E—as inspiration and would bring the nimbleness of those research agencies to the Department of Agriculture. DARPA and ARPA-E projects typically last fewer years than those supported by other research agencies, making it possible to shift the budget toward new opportunities and away from less promising areas. This is further enabled by unprecedented independence built into the ARPA model: DARPA and ARPA-E project funding is left up to the discretion of the organization and is not restricted by higher-level interventions from the Departments of Defense or Energy. AgARDA would thus be able to react quickly to new opportunities or challenges, such as novel diseases in livestock agriculture, and fund appropriate research to manage them.

AgARDA also would have the capacity to carry high-impact innovations over the commercialization “valley of death” by funding prototyping and scale-up of these technologies. Innovations might include methane-reducing cattle feed additives or crops bred to sequester more carbon than conventional crops. ARPA-E has successfully supported technological innovations in bridging the valley of death by connecting researchers with business leaders, loan opportunities, and corporate development as part of its Scaleup program. Jeff St. John, “ARPA-E’s New Focus: Bridging the Valleys of Death for Cleantech R&D,” Canary Media, June 1, 2021, https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/clean-energy/arpa-es-new-focus-bridging-the-valley-of-death-for-clean-tech-r-d. AgARDA would be able to take the lessons of ARPA-E and DARPA and apply them directly to agricultural research and technologies.

Increase Funding for Climate Change Mitigation Priorities

Increasing federal research funding is highly beneficial, contributing to agricultural productivity growth, climate change mitigation, and other important goals. But research on some topics can have outsized effects on boosting productivity, reducing emissions, limiting land use, and otherwise improving agriculture’s environmental performance. The following is a non-exhaustive set of research areas with particularly large climate change mitigation potential.

Crop Breeding and Genetic Engineering

Increasing crop as well as livestock yields ought to remain a central tenet of public agricultural R&D. Maintaining and increasing yields in the face of rising temperatures, widespread drought, more common heat waves, shifting pest patterns, and other impacts of climate change will be one of the key challenges over the coming decades.

While conventional crop breeding remains essential, genetic engineering is a particularly promising pathway to increase productivity and decrease greenhouse gas emissions. For example, recent research by the Realizing Increased Photosynthetic Efficiency (RIPE) research project—led by the University of Illinois and funded in part by FFAR—has made remarkable progress toward increasing crop yields by improving the biological process of photosynthesis. “Our Story,” Realizing Increased Photosynthetic Efficiency, accessed June 30, 2022, https://ripe.illinois. edu/objectives/our-story.

Such improvements to photosynthetic efficiency could have large impacts on global greenhouse gas emissions and land use. If the yield increases observed in the RIPE program were achieved for major US crops such as corn, soybeans, wheat, and cotton, avoided emissions could total 221 million tons CO2e per year. Emma Kovak, “Genetically Engineered Crops Are Key to Lower Carbon Agriculture,” The Breakthrough Institute, July 20, 2021, https://thebreakthrough.org/issues/food/ge-crops-are-key-to-lower-carbon-ag.

The Agricultural Genome to Phenome Initiative could provide additional public investment in genetic engineering research. It received authorization in the 2018 Farm Bill for $40 million in funding per year, but has received only $1 million in funding to date. Reauthorizing the pro-gram in the 2023 Farm Bill and funding it to the authorized levels would support foundational research that would improve efficiency and productivity of crops as well as livestock.

Livestock Agriculture and Enteric Methane

Animal agriculture and production of animal feed are responsible for a significant portion of US agricultural greenhouse gas emissions, most of its land use, and other environmental problems such as water and air pollution. Peter H. Lehner and Nathan A. Rosenberg, Farming for Our Future: The Science, Law, and Policy of Climate-Neutral Agriculture (Washington, DC: Environmental Law Institute, 2021). Gains in livestock productivity have served to keep food prices low, reduce emissions intensities, and limit land use. But the environmental impacts of livestock production, particularly beef and dairy production, in the United States remain very high.

Though enteric methane, which is generated through cattle and other ruminants’ digestive processes, is responsible for about 28 percent of US agricultural greenhouse gas emissions, it receives little federal research funding. Less than 1 percent of funding from USDA research agencies for climate mitigation is devoted to projects focused on enteric methane. Internal analysis, Breakthrough Institute. Available upon request.

While R&D cannot eliminate the carbon or land footprint of livestock production, it can nevertheless substantially reduce its environmental impact. Dan Blaustein-Rejto, Alex Smith, and Emma Kovak, “The Clean Cow: Cutting the Carbon Footprint of US Beef Production,” The Breakthrough Institute, October 21, 2021, https://thebreakthrough.org/issues/food/the-clean-cow. For example, public R&D into feed additives can significantly inhibit enteric methane emissions from cattle. Feeding beef cattle in feedlots Asparagopsis taxiformis, a red seaweed, has been found to reduce methane emissions as much as 98 percent, though most trials find more modest results. Robert D. Kinley et al., “Mitigating the Carbon Footprint and Improving Productivity of Ruminant Livestock Agriculture Using a Red Seaweed,” Journal of Cleaner Production 259 (June 2020), https://www. sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959652620308830. Widespread use of this additive could dramatically cut dairy and beef’s carbon footprint, but only if researchers find ways to cost-effectively administer it to grazing cattle, improve cultivation of the seaweed at scale, demonstrate efficacy and safety over long-term feeding trials, and overcome other technical challenges. Blaustein-Rejto, Smith, and Kovak, “The Clean Cow.”

Other potential public R&D targets to reduce emissions include breeding more efficient livestock, conducting basic research on the cattle rumen, and addressing heat stress for confined animals and thereby improving their health and productivity. Blaustein-Rejto, Smith, and Kovak, “The Clean Cow.” “Anaerobic Digestion on Swine Farms,” Environmental Protection Agency, updated October 25, 2021, https://www.epa.gov/agstar/anaerobic-digestion-swine-farms. Günther Schauberger et al., “Global Warming Impacts on Confined Livestock in Buildings: Efficacy of Adaptation Measures to Reduce Heat Stress for Growing-Fattening Pigs,” Climatic Change 156 (2019): 567-87, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-019-02525-3.

Renewing and expanding FFAR’s funding through the 2023 Farm Bill and increasing funding for relevant AFRI and ARS programs could substantially advance scientific understanding of how to reduce livestock emissions, particularly enteric methane. In 2021, FFAR created the Greener Cattle Initiative, an industry consortium, to award about $5 million to R&D aimed at reducing enteric methane emissions. AFRI’s Sustainable Agriculture Systems program also granted $10 million in 2021 to Colby College to study the efficacy, safety, feasibility, and consumer perception of algae-based feed additives for US dairy cattle. Emily Bass, “What Is the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative?,” The Breakthrough Institute, June 28, 2022, https://thebreakthrough.org/issues/food-agriculture-environment/what-is-the-agriculture-and-food-research-initiative. The Agricultural Research Service also studies feed additives, breeding, and other options to reduce enteric emissions at its centers in University Park, Pennsylvania; Madison, Wisconsin; Bushland, Texas; Beltsville, Maryland; and other locations. “Find a Research Project,” United States Department of Agriculture, 2022, https://www.ars.usda.gov/research/projects/?q=methane&type=all. These efforts should be expanded. Leading researchers from Princeton University, Cornell University, and other institutions have called for a $100 million initiative just to run multiyear tests of feed additives. Tim Searchinger et al., “Opportunities to Reduce Methane Emissions from Global Agriculture,” November 2021, https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/methane_discussion_paper_nov_2021.pdf.

Soil Carbon Sequestration

A significant portion of interest in agricultural decarbonization in the United States over recent years has focused on soil carbon sequestration. Carbon sequestration in agricultural soils has the technical potential to offset a significant portion of greenhouse gas emissions produced by US agriculture. But there are several limitations. Not only does measuring changes in soil carbon remain an expensive, labor-intensive process, but the effect of various farming practices, such as cover crops, on soil carbon levels also depends on a wide array of factors such as soil type, precipitation, crop type, and farm management, making sequestration rates difficult to predict. In addition, soil carbon sequestration is not highly durable; changes in farming practices or land use can re-release stored carbon. Alex Smith and Dan Blaustein-Rejto, “The Limits of Soil Carbon Sequestration,” The Breakthrough Institute, March 9, 2020, https://thebreakthrough.org/issues/food/carbon-farming.

Additional R&D could help address some limitations and enable greater, more durable sequestration. A recent report from the nonprofit organization Carbon180 proposes a plan for a soil carbon “moonshot” that includes $110 million in funding for research on soil carbon dynamics over five years and $225 million in funding for the development of crops that can sequester more carbon by growing deeper roots. Cristel Zoebisch and Giana Amador, Soil Carbon Moonshot: Grounding Carbon Storage in Science, Carbon180, March 2022, https://static1.squarespace.co... 292045a84bb233211775e7/1646862413364/Carbon180-SoilCarbonMoonshot.pdf. Though at an early stage of research, widespread adoption of such crops could theoretically sequester over 700 million tons of carbon dioxide per year in US soils, an amount greater than current-day agricultural greenhouse gas emissions. Keith Paustian et al., Assessment of Potential Greenhouse Gas Mitigation from Changes to Crop Root Mass and Architecture, Final Report to ARPA-E, Booz Allen Hamilton Inc., January 29, 2016, https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1339423.

Meat and Dairy Alternatives

Public R&D funding on alternative proteins, such as plant-based meats, would be a boon for the environment while creating new jobs. Plant-based meat and dairy alternatives generally have a far smaller carbon, land, and water footprint than conventional livestock products, Saloni Shah, “Are Alternative Proteins a Climate Solution?,” The Breakthrough Institute, June 1, 2022, https://thebreakthrough.org/issues/food/are-alternative-proteins-a-climate-solution. generate less air and water pollution, and do not contribute to antibiotic resistance. Raychel E. Santo et al., “Considering Plant-Based Meat Substitutes and Cell-Based Meats: A Public Health and Food Systems Perspective,” Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems, August 31, 2020, https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fsufs.2020.00134/full. In addition, if the US alternative protein industry remains globally competitive and continues to grow, it could generate 50,000 to 100,000 new domestic jobs within the coming decade. Ariel Ron and Alex Smith, “American National Competitiveness and the Future of Meat,” Good Food Institute and The Breakthrough Institute, June 14, 2022, https://thebreakthrough.org/articles/american-national-competitiveness-and-the-future-of-meat. But while the United States has funded some alternative protein R&D, funding remains low and lags the support provided by the EU, Canada, and other countries such as Singapore and China.

The federal government could establish an Interagency Alternative Proteins Initiative to coordinate R&D across multiple agencies and levels of government. In addition, federal and state governments can establish and fund interdisciplinary centers of excellence focused specifically on alternative protein R&D. Research agencies should, among other priorities, focus on developing open-access databases and biomaterial repositories such as a database characterizing plant proteins, as well as support development of better ingredient processing and manufacturing equipment for alternative protein production. Ron and Smith, “American National Competitiveness and the Future of Meat.” US spending to date has been relatively paltry, about $6 million per year from 2019 to 2021, largely administered by AFRI. Data retrieved from Alternative Proteins Research Grants Tracker, accessed July 11, 2022, https://gfi. org/resource/research-grants-tracker. In 2021, the Good Food Institute proposed that the USDA direct $50 million in funding to alternative protein R&D in 2022; an investment of that size could drive down prices for alternative protein production, reduce inefficiencies, and help the industry grow to compete for markets internationally. Jessica Almy et al., Letter to the Honorable Rosa DeLauro, the Honorable Kay Granger, the Honorable Sanford Bishop, and the Honorable Jeff Fortenberry, March 2, 2021, https://gfi.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/FY22-Sign-On-Letter_Request-for-Alternative-Protein-Research_House_Ag_03-02.pdf.

Fertilizer Innovation

Research into enhanced efficiency and microbial fertilizers, alternative approaches to synthesizing nitrogen fertilizer, and other areas of fertilizer innovation could improve farm productivity and reduce nutrient runoff, greenhouse gas emissions, and farm input costs. However, current private sector funding for research is limited. The global fertilizer industry spends an estimated $100 million per year on R&D, 0.1 to 0.2 percent of its revenue; in contrast, the seed industry spends 10-20 percent. David R. Kanter and Timothy D. Searchinger, “A Technology-Forcing Approach to Reduce Nitrogen Pollution,” Nature Sustainability 1, no. 10 (October 2018): 547. Government incentives for private R&D or additional public funding could fill this gap. Among federal agencies, NIFA, the Department of Energy, and the National Science Foundation are particularly well suited to fund advanced fertilizer R&D as they have already provided support to the area, such as a University of Minnesota project funded by ARPA-E to use wind power for ammonia synthesis. “Wind Energy to Ammonia Synthesis,” ARPA-E, December 15, 2016, https://arpa-e.energy.gov/technologies/projects/wind-energy-ammonia-synthesis.

Acknowledgments

The Breakthrough Institute is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit environmental research center based in Berkeley, California, that identifies and promotes technological solutions to environmental and human development challenges.

Special thanks to Keith Fuglie, Uris Baldos, and Julian Alston for providing valuable information and feedback on this report. Thank you to Michael Lebwohl for originally developing the “Structure of US Public Agricultural R&D” figure. Lynn Page Whittaker performed copyediting, proofreading, and fact-checking. Layout, figure design, and cover design were done by Janet Mumford. All errors and opinions are those of the authors.

Alex Smith is Editorial Director at Breakthrough.

Recent Articles

Public financing for agricultural decarbonization and abundance.

Jun 3, 2024

Technology, Not Climate, Will Determine the Future of our Food System

Sep 27, 2023

Conservation Vs. the Climate

Jun 26, 2023

In The News

Meat Without Animals

Jun 14, 2022

Russia invasion fuels fear of American food price hikes

Mar 29, 2022

Food for the Table, Not for the Gas Tank

Mar 14, 2022

Dan Blaustein-Rejto

Dan Blaustein-Rejto is the Director of the Food and Agriculture program at Breakthrough.

From Lab to Farm

Apr 30, 2024

New EPA Data Shows Agricultural Emissions Remain High

Apr 16, 2024

The Case for Doubling Down on Agricultural R&D

Jan 11, 2024

Agricultural innovation is a win for farmers and the climate

Dec 17, 2018

Seaweed could make cows burp less methane and cut their carbon hoofprint

Nov 23, 2018

Apúntate a la gastronomía sostenible, una forma de consumir más sano y respetando el medio ambiente

Oct 16, 2018

Related Articles

Investing in public r&d for a competitive and sustainable us agriculture, the clean cow.

An official website of the United States government

Here's how you know

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

About Grants

The lifecycle of grants and cooperative agreements consists of four phases: Pre-Award, Award, Post-Award, and Close Out.

Access to Data

The National Institute of Food and Agriculture is committed to serving its stakeholders, Congress, and the public by using new technologies to advance greater openness.

Access Data Gateway

The Data Gateway enables users to find funding data, metrics, and information about research, education, and extension projects that have received grant awards from NIFA.

View Resources Page

This website houses a large volume of supporting materials. In this section, you can search the wide range of documents, videos, and other resources.

Featured Webinar

Second annual virtual grants support technical assistance workshop.

Check out this five-day workshop in March 2024 workshop, designed to help you learn about NIFA grants and resources for grants development and management.

The National Institute of Food and Agriculture provides leadership and funding for programs that advance agriculture-related sciences.

NIFA supports research, educational, and extension efforts in a wide range of scientific fields related to agricultural and behavioral sciences. In all of these areas, you will find NIFA working in pursuit of our vision. To address contemporary agricultural challenges, we seek to catalyze transformative discoveries and enhance education and engagement.

Advanced Technologies

Business and Economics

Environment

Farming and Ranching

Food and Nutrition Security

Human sciences.

International

Natural Resources

The Science of Food

Your feedback is important to us..

An official website of the United States government

Here’s how you know

Official websites use .gov A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS A lock ( Lock A locked padlock ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

• Science and Technology Directorate

70 Years of Protecting the Nation’s Agriculture

Guest post from Tod Companion, PhD, director of the Science and Technology Directorate’s Plum Island Animal Disease Center (PIADC).

This month, PIADC marks 7 decades of protecting U.S. agriculture and livestock from transboundary animal diseases. These diseases are highly contagious and capable of rapid spread with the potential to produce high morbidity/mortality rates. While PIADC scientists do not research diseases that pose health threats to humans, these diseases do pose significant threats to food and agriculture security, trade, and the economy.

To combat these threats, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) established the laboratory on Plum Island in 1954 following the passage of Public Law 80-496 by Congress. This enabled the Secretary of Agriculture to research foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) and other animal diseases on an island separate from the mainland—an early nod to biosecurity measures. Formerly home to the U.S. Army’s Ft. Terry, structures on Plum Island were refitted and repurposed to meet USDA’s research needs until construction of a new lab was completed and inaugurated in 1956.

Post 9/11, in 2003 the USDA conferred management and oversight of the lab to the newly formed U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Since then, PIADC has operated as a partnership between DHS, USDA Agricultural Research Service (ARS), and USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS). To ensure the nation is prepared to respond to, control, and recover from an outbreak on the U.S. mainland, PIADC scientists from DHS, ARS, and APHIS focus their research on detection technologies, diagnostics, therapeutics, and decontamination technologies.

The research conducted by PIADC scientists over these 70 years has been transparent and accessible to the public and the scientific community through the publication of hundreds of articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals. This research has directly contributed to scientific breakthroughs, including the characterization, and contributions to the elimination of the cattle plague Rinderpest—one of only two diseases (the other being Smallpox) eradicated by humankind—and the development of two functional FMD vaccines, which have helped ensure the U.S. mainland has been free of FMD for nearly 100 years.

More recently, USDA scientists at PIADC collaborated with colleagues in Vietnam to develop the first two commercially available vaccines to protect against African swine fever (ASF). DHS scientists continue to investigate the stability of ASF and FMD in and on various matrices and surfaces under different environmental conditions to allow farmers and producers to protect livestock and prevent outbreaks and to provide policy makers and state and local animal health officials with information that can aid in response and recovery planning.

Another vital function of the lab has been training foreign animal disease diagnosticians (FADD). Since 1971, the USDA APHIS FADD course has allowed federal and state veterinarians to observe transboundary animal diseases of economic importance, including FMD and ASF, in a controlled environment. Over more than 50 years, USDA APHIS has hosted hundreds of courses, training thousands of veterinarians to identify these diseases in the field, thereby protecting our animals and our food supply.

As PIADC marks its 70th year, we find ourselves looking forward to the transition of the scientific mission to the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility and the eventual closure of the lab. Until that transition occurs, it continues to be my honor to serve as PIADC Director, supporting its essential mission, and leading a diverse workforce of scientific, animal care, administrative, operations and maintenance, and transportation personnel, all of whom contributed through the years to the fulfillment of our mission and the establishment our legacy. To preserve this legacy, we are working with the National Archives and Records Administration to prepare permanent historic and scientific records and artifacts for accession to ensure the island’s history and our important scientific body of work is available for future generations.

Learn more about the storied history of the lab on our PIADC 70th anniversary site .

• Science and Technology
• Food and Agriculture

The Ohio State University

• BuckeyeLink
• Find People
• Search Ohio State

CFAES COVID-19 Resources:    Safe and Healthy Buckeyes   |   COVID-19 Hub   |   CFAES Calendar

College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences

Search form

Research news - july 2024, breadcrumb menu.

Inside this Issue

• CFAES R&GE is pleased to announce the FY25 Internal Grants Program RFP is now available.
• The Bezos Earth Fund has launched the $100 million AI for Climate and Nature Grand Challenge.
• Suggest companies to invite to attend GSPIRE (Graduate Student and PostDoc Industry Recruitment Event).
• Learn statistical techniques in R/R Studio as well as data management using Git/GitHub in ENTMLGY 6707.

Download the PDF

Funding Opportunties 

As funding opportunities are announced we will compile a full list on our website. The web page will be updated periodically as new opportunities are discovered.

Advancing nutrition via gene editing Bayer seeks to partner with academic researchers and companies to develop new fruit and vegetable products that have increased nutritional content, enhanced consumer appeal or positive impact on the environment by harnessing the speed and precision of gene editing/new breeding techniques. Deadline: July 31, 2024

Harvest for Health Challenge This Challenge aims to accelerate the development of underutilized crops and to increase the diversity of nutritious foods in the marketplace. FFAR & Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN), with support from RF Catalytic Capital, launched this challenge to accelerate development of underutilized crops. Deadline: August 7, 2024

View All Funding Opportunities

FY25 Internal grants program RFP Now Available!

Alex Maddox, CFAES IGP Coordinator

The CFAES Office for Research & Graduate Education is pleased to announce the FY 2025 Internal Grants Program Request for Proposals is now available. Keep an eye out for more information in the coming weeks and be sure to review the RFP and application templates for the full list of proposal requirements. Note that student competitions will be released later in the summer.

New Researcher Incentive Program (maximum of $75,000 per award)

• Objective: CFAES recognizes that many new researchers have the interest and ability to develop innovative and robust research programs that can generate preliminary data needed to secure externally funded sponsored projects. The New Researcher Incentive Program aims to fund new, innovative research to generate that preliminary data.
• Eligibility: Principal Investigators must be in a tenure-eligible position, research scientists, or postdoctoral researchers in an academic unit or program within CFAES. New Researchers must also have been employed at OSU for less than six years in their current position and have PI status approval from the Office of Research. Adjunct or Emeritus faculty are not eligible. Positions designated as limited or Co-PI status by the Office of Research are not eligible.

Immediate Needs Program (maximum of $75,000 per award)

• Objective: CFAES recognizes the high potential to address immediate needs areas that are critical to our stakeholders and society. The Immediate Needs program provides funding to address critical needs by exploring new areas of research that CFAES does not currently address and/or applied research that directly supports CFAES stakeholders. The program will also consider funding projects that provide researchers and teams the resources to learn or develop new techniques or approaches that will position CFAES to better serve stakeholders or make faculty more competitive for future funding opportunities.
• Eligibility: All CFAES researchers with Principal Investigator status are eligible to submit a proposal (except adjunct and emeritus faculty). Proposals must be submitted by a group (2 or more) of investigators. Investigators (both lead and Co-PI) may be from the same academic unit, but not the same lab.

Deadline: Due 10/2/24 by 5:00 p.m. Please submit online via the CFAES-R&GE Internal Grants Submission Portal .

Additional Information Interested in learning more about IGP? Please direct all questions to Alexandria Maddox at [email protected] or visit go.osu.edu/fy24-igp for more information.

View our informational video on the R&GE website where Alexandria walks viewers through the process step-by-step and follow along via the downloadable PowerPoint guide . The recorded session will introduce you to the IGP competition categories, eligibility requirements, submission portal, application process & review and commonly asked questions.

Congratulations to the following SI core faculty:

Promotion to Associate Professor with Tenure

•  Matthew Hamilton - SENR
•  Ryan Winston - FABE

Congratulations to the following SI affiliated faculty:

Promotion to Professor

•  Eric Romich - OSU Extension
•  Christopher Zoller - OSU Extension
•  Sami Khanal - FABE

From the Sustainability Institute Faculty Newsletter - 6/11/2024

In the News

Payroll Accounting Adjustments Update Beginning July 1, 2024, to align with federal guidance, payroll accounting adjustments (PAAs) will no longer be processed for past certification periods. This means that:

• Once certified, effort will be considered final.
• Salary cost transfers must either be processed prior to issuance of effort certification documents or corrected during the certification process. If effort for a past period isn’t certified, it is an unallowable cost.

PAAs submitted after certification and PAAs adjusting effort that occurred before the most recent certification period will be denied and uncertified effort will be billed back to the investigator’s department, consistent with processes for all unallowable expenditures.  

Ask Questions: PAA Office Hours Leadership from the Enterprise for Research, Innovation and Knowledge will hold virtual office hours and provide a short overview of the change as well as answer questions Fridays on the following dates from 9 - 9:45 AM: July 5, July 12, July 19, and July 26.

Add the sessions to your calendar and  receive the link to join . 

From the OSU Enterprise for Research, Innovation and Knowledge

Grant Searching Made Easy: Mastering Keywords on Grants.gov Unlock the full potential of Grants.gov and discover the perfect grant opportunity for your organization. Use these search tips & tricks to navigate the vast landscape of funding opportunities offered on Grants.gov.

From the Grants.gov Newsletter - May 2024

Research Development & Grant Writing News We invite you to access the current issue of Research Development and Grant Writing News. The Enterprise for Research, Innovation, and Knowledge | Research Development Office provides access to this subscription-based newsletter for the entire campus community.

• June 2024 Select List of Humanities, HSS, and Arts Opportunities & News
• Funding Profile: Homeland Security Office of University Programs in Sci. & Tech.
• New Faculty Guide to Finding NSF Funding
• Heads up! NSF’s New Graduate Student Mentoring Plan Requirement
• Unsolicited Proposals to Federal Agencies
• Win Your Grant on Page 1
• To Revise, Re-Write, or Begin Anew? (reprinted from the January 2019 issue).

From the June 2024 Issue of Research Development & Grant Writing News Listserv on 6/20/2024 -Subscribe

Read More   Subscribe

New Fringe Benefit Rates effective 7/1/2024-6/30/2025 Faculty: 25% (ODP-17%) Staff: 30% Students: 8.2%

From the North Central Regional Association of State Agricultural Experiment Station Directors - 6/12/2024

You’ll learn:

• Develop foundational skills using the word’s most popular statistical software: R and R Studio (free to download).
• Learn best practices in open science, such as how to interface with GitHub using R Studio.
• Get hands-on eperience analyzing data using linear mixed-effects models and multivariate commuinty analyses.
• No prior experience - with R, GitHub, or insects - is required.

From the CFAES Wooster Community Listserv - 6/5/2024

Helpful Hints to Understanding NIFA’s Funding Opportunities New to the National Institute of Food and Agriculture’s (NIFA) funding opportunities? Or maybe you’ve been a NIFA grant recipient before. Either way, NIFA has online resources available for potential applicants to our programs.

From the North Central Regional Association of State Agricultural Experiment Station Directors - 5/10/2024

Submit Suggestions for GSPIRE Faculty, are you aware of companies that might be interested in hiring Ohio State graduate students? Graduate students and postdocs, what companies would you like to work at after academia? We are requesting suggestions of companies (and contact information if possible) to invite them to attend GSPIRE (Graduate Student and PostDoc Industry Recruitment Event), which will take place later this fall. If you have any suggestions, please complete the excel form linked below.

From the 2024 GSPIRE Planning Committee email - 6/24/2024

Fill Out Form

Upcoming NIFA webinars

7/1/24 | 2:00 PM EDT, 2024 Open Data Framework RFA Technical Assistance Live Q&A Webinar This program will build a framework to create a neutral & secure data repository and cooperative where producers, universities and nonprofit entities can store and share data in ways that will foster ag innovation.

7/2/24 | 2:00 PM EDT , Technical Assistance Webinar: 1890 Capacity Building Grants Program RFA Program staff will host an RFA technical assistance webinar for the 1890 Capacity Building Grants Program followed by a live Q&A session

7/8/24 | 12:00 PM EDT, NIFA Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza Animal Health Research Opportunities USDA NIFA will hold an informational webinar regarding relevant program area priorities where proposals related to Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) in animal health will be considered for AFRI programs.

7/25/24 | 1:00 PM EDT, Technical Assistance Webinar: AFRI-EWD Agricultural Workforce Training at Community Colleges RFA USDA NIFA staff will present information about the AFRI-EWD Agricultural Workforce Training at Community Colleges program RFA for FY24. Attendees will have the opportunity to ask questions.

From USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture Daily Digest Bulletin 6/26/2024

Recent Awards

• Melanie Ivey - Plant Path, $10,000: Can mustard pollen mitigate Vairimorpha (Nosema) infection in honey bee colonies?, Pollinator Partnership
• Jamie Strange - ENT, $149,357: siRNA suppression of Vairimorpha (=Nosema) bombi in captively reared yellow banded bumble bees (Bombus terricola) for species recovery efforts in the Northeastern United States, One Hive Foundation
• Talita Resende - Animal Sciences, Jacqueline Nolting - Vet Med, $146,290: PorkProspect: Nurturing talent for a sustainable swine industry, NPB project swine education & outreach professionals – 2024, National Pork Board
• Jim Ippolito - SENR, $102,486: Assessing biosolid treatment processes on environmental fate and plant uptake of pollutants from land application of biosolids, Michigan State University
• Enrico Bonello - Plant Path, $327,317: Increasing infrastructure for early detection of native and invasive forest pathogen deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), US Forest Service
• Gwynn Stewart - OSU Extension, $40,000: Partnering to customize building an entrepreneur friendly community curriculum for the outdoor recreation, Purdue University
• Scott Kenney - CFAH, $177,188: Evaluation of nanoparticle delivered CRISPR/Cas13-targeting hepatitis E virus as a therapeutic, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
• Rafael Jimenez-Flores - FST, $52,703: Design of a simple process to obtain an ingredient rich in milk fat globule membrane and milk phospholipids, Dairy Management Inc.

Want more CFAES Research News? Follow us on Social Media! 

Facebook   Twitter

• Crop Production
• Ag Technology
• Natural Resources
• Farm Management
• Building Plans and Home Maintenance
• Farm Safety & Health
• Research Extension Centers
• County Extension Offices
• Variety Trials

Agronomy tours highlight Carrington Research Extension Center field day

Crop agronomics, marketing, and pest management are among the topics that will be covered during the annual field day Tuesday, July 16, at North Dakota State University’s Carrington Research Extension Center (CREC).     

“This is the premier summer event to showcase our center’s research and hear about exciting new developments in production agriculture. The best part is the information is generated locally, which gives people a chance to see and hear about what works in their region,” says Mike Ostlie, CREC director . Speakers primarily will be NDSU crop scientists and Extension specialists.

The agronomy production tour is one of several tours offered during the morning of the field day. Other tours are livestock, northern hardy fruit, and organic and sustainable agriculture. An afternoon tour will focus on  agronomics and outlook of specialty crops .

The center’s 65th annual field day begins at 9 a.m. with registration, coffee and a welcome address by NDSU leaders, including NDSU President David Cook, and special guests. At 9:30, attendees will have the opportunity to choose from four tour options that run concurrently. Lunch will be served at noon with an afternoon tour on specialty crops available from 1:15 to 3 p.m. 

Topics and speakers are: 

• NDSU crop breeder updates on spring wheat and dry beans – Andrew Green, wheat breeder, NDSU Department of Plant Sciences, Fargo, and Juan Osorno, dry bean breeder, NDSU Department of Plant Sciences
• Managing kochia and other difficult weeds in corn and soybean – Joe Ikley, Extension weed specialist, NDSU Department of Plant Sciences
• Soybean marketing and crush facility updates – David Ripplinger, Extension bioproducts/bioenergy economist, NDSU Agribusiness and Applied Economics, Fargo
• Nitrogen and microbe fate in different cropping and tillage systems – Kelsey Griesheim, Soil Fertility, NDSU School of Natural Resource Sciences, Fargo, Samiran Banerjee, NDSU Microbiological Sciences, Fargo, Sergio Cabello Leiva, soil scientist at the CREC  
• Dry bean fungicide application recommendations for 2024 – Michael Wunsch, research plant pathologist, CREC

After lunch, participants have the opportunity to attend an afternoon tour on specialty crops. Topics include lupin, kernza, pennycress, sorghum and cover crops. The tour will provide hands-on experience with these crops and share information about production, opportunities and pitfalls for these crops, all of which have emerging markets in North Dakota. Speakers include Kristin Simons, agronomist, CREC, Mike Ostlie, director of the CREC, Cabello Leiva, Lindsay Malone, climate smart approaches in ag, NDSU School of Natural Resources, Fargo, and David Marks from Forever Green.

The noon meal is free of charge thanks in part to support from Green Bison Soy Processing and the Carrington Research Extension Center. 

The CREC is 3.5 miles north of Carrington on U.S. Highway 281.

For more information, contact the center at 701-652-2951 or visit ndsu.ag/crec-field-day . 

Direct any further questions to Mike Ostlie at 701-652-2951 or by email at [email protected] .

This is the prefooter section

1230 Albrecht Blvd, Fargo ND  58102 Mailing address:  NDSU Dept. 7520, PO Box 6050, Fargo, ND  58108-6050

North Dakota State University is distinctive as a student-focused, land-grant, research university. NDSU Agriculture educates students with interests in agriculture, food systems and natural resources; fosters communities through partnerships that educate the public; provides creative, cost-effective solutions to current problems; and pursues fundamental and applied research to help shape a better world.

How agricultural producers use local knowledge, climate information, and on-farm “experiments” to address drought risk

• Published: 28 June 2024

Cite this article

• Adam J. Snitker   ORCID: orcid.org/0009-0002-4751-7253 1 ,
• Laurie Yung 1 ,
• Elizabeth Covelli Metcalf 1 ,
• R. Kyle Bocinsky 1 ,
• Neva Hassanein 3 ,
• Kelsey Jensco 2 ,
• Ada P. Smith 1 &
• Austin Schuver 1  

12 Accesses

2 Altmetric

Explore all metrics

Climate change is expected to increase the frequency and intensity of drought in many parts of the world, including Montana. In the face of worsening drought conditions, agricultural producers need to adapt their operations to mitigate risk. This study examined the role of local knowledge and climate information in drought-related decisions through five focus groups with Montana farmers and ranchers. We found that trust and risk perceptions mediated how producers utilized both local knowledge and climate information. More specifically, producers relied on local knowledge in drought-related decisions, regarding their own observation and past experience as trustworthy and not particularly risky. In contrast, climate information and seasonal climate forecasts in particular were regarded as risky and untrustworthy, largely due to a perceived lack of accuracy. Since producers tended to be risk averse, especially given market and climate uncertainties, they rarely relied on “risky” climate information. At the same time, producers actively managed risk and tested out new technologies and practices through processes of trial and error, what they called “experimenting,” which enabled them to build firsthand knowledge of potential adaptations. In the context of uncertainty and risk aversion, programs that reduce the financial risk of experimenting with new technologies and adaptive practices are needed to enable producers to develop direct experience with innovations designed to mitigate drought risk. Further, scientists developing climate information need to work directly with farmers and ranchers to better integrate local knowledge into climate information.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Subscribe and save.

• Get 10 units per month
• Download Article/Chapter or Ebook
• 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
• Cancel anytime

Price includes VAT (Russian Federation)

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Rent this article via DeepDyve

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Do advisors perceive climate change as an agricultural risk an in-depth examination of midwestern u.s. ag advisors’ views on drought, climate change, and risk management.

Climate Change Perceptions of NY State Farmers: The Role of Risk Perceptions and Adaptive Capacity

Farmers and climate change: a cross-national comparison of beliefs and risk perceptions in high-income countries, data availability.

The data presented in this article are not readily available in order to protect the confidentiality of study participants.

Aimin, H. 2010. Uncertainty, Risk Aversion and Risk Management in Agriculture. Agriculture and Agricultural Science Procedia . International Conference on Agricultural Risk and Food Security. 152–156.

Agrawal, A. 1995. Dismantling the divide between indigenous and scientific knowledge. Development and Change 26(3): 413–439.

Article   Google Scholar  

Alexander, S. H., and P. Block. 2022. Integration of seasonal precipitation forecast information into local-level agricultural decision-making using an agent-based model to support community adaptation. Climate Risk Management 36: 100417.

Babbie, E. 2010. The Practice of Social Research (12th edition) Wadsworth.

Beier, P., L. J. Hansen, L. Helbrecht, and D. Behar. 2017. A how-to guide for coproduction of actionable science. Conservation Letters 10(3): 288–296.

Breuer, N. E., V. E. Cabrera, K. T. Ingram, K. Broad, and P. E. Hildlebrand. 2008. AgClimate: a case study in participatory decision support system development. Climatic Change 87(3): 385–403.

Bruno Soares, M., and S. Dessai. 2016. Barriers and enablers to the use of seasonal climate forecasts amongst organisations in Europe. Climatic Change 137: 89–103. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-016-1671-8 .

Campbell, B. M., S. J. Vermeulen, P. K. Aggarwal, C. Corner-Dolloff, E. Girvetz, A. M. Loboguerrero, J. Ramirez-Villegas, T. Rosenstock, L. Sebastian, P. K. Thorton, and E. Wollenberg. 2016. Reducing risks to food security from climate change. Global Food Security 11: 34–43.

Canales, G., B. Coles, C. Cornejo, T. Fletcher, T. Manganyi, K. Owusu, K. Painter, H. Pellish, E. Stonerook, and D. Wilsey. 2005. Perceptions and attitudes of smallholder farmers in north central Florida regarding the potential usefulness of seasonal climate forecasts. Southeast Climate Consortium Technical Report Series, SECC-05-003 , 1–11.

Cash, D. W., J. C. Borck, and A. G. Patt. 2006. Countering the loading-dock approach to linking science and decision making: comparative analysis of El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) forecasting systems. Sciences Technology and Human Values 31(4): 465–494.

Cash, D. W., W. C. Clark, F. Alcock, N. M. Dickson, N. Eckley, D. H. Guston, and R. B. Mitchell. 2003. Knowledge systems for sustainable development. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 100: 8086–8091. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1231332100 .

Carolan, M. S. 2006a. Social change and the adoption and adaptation of knowledge claims: whose truth do you trust in regard to sustainable agriculture? Agriculture and Human Values 23(3): 325–339. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-006-9006-4 .

Carolan, M. S. 2006b. Sustainable agriculture, science and the co- production of ‘expert’ knowledge: the value of interactional expertise. Local Environment 11(4): 421–431. https://doi.org/10.1080/13549830600785571 .

Carolan, M. S. 2012. The sociology of food and agriculture . New York, NY: Routhlege.

Book   Google Scholar  

Chatrchyan, A. M., R. C. Erlebacher, N. T. Chaopricha, J. Chan, D. Tobin, and S. B. Allred. 2017. United States agricultural stakeholder views and decisions on climate change. WIREs Climate Change 8: 1–21.

Chiputwa, B., P. Wainaina, T. Nakelse, P. Makui, R. B. Zougmoré, O. Ndiaye, and P. A. Minang. 2020. Transforming climate science into usable services: the effectiveness of co-production in promoting uptake of climate information by smallholder farmers in Senegal. Climate Services 20. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cliser.2020.100203 .

Clark, W. C., L. van Kerkhoff, L. Lebel, and G. C. Gallopin. 2016. Crafting usable knowledge for sustainable development. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 113:4570–4578. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1601266113 .

Crane, T. A., C. Roncoli, and G. Hoogenboom. 2011. Adaptation to climate change and climate variability: the importance of understanding agriculture as performance. NJAS– Wageningen Journal of Life Sciences 57: 179–185.

Crane, T. A., C. Roncoli, J. Paz, N. Breuer, K. Broad, K. T. Ingram, and G. Hoogenboom. 2010. Forecast skill and farmers’ skills: seasonal climate forecasts and agricultural risk management in the southeastern United States. Weather Climate and Society 2: 44–59. https://doi.org/10.1175/2009WCAS1006.1 .

Dessai, S., M. Hulme, R. Lempert, and R. A. Pielke. 2009. Do we need better predictions to adapt to a changing climate? Eos Trans AGU 90(13): 111–112. https://doi.org/10.1029/2009EO130003 .

Dilling, L., and M. C. Lemos. 2011. Creating usable science: opportunities and constraints for climate knowledge use and their implications for science policy. Global Environmental Change 21: 680–689. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2010.11.006 .

Dunn, M. R., J. A. Lindesay, and M. Howden. 2015. Spatial and temporal scales of future climate information for climate change adaptation in viticulture: a case study of user needs in the Australian winegrape sector. Australian Journal of Grape and Wine Research 21: 226–239.

Doblas-Reyes, F. J., J. Garcia-Serrano, F. Lienert, Piton Biescas, A., and L. R. L. Rodrigues. 2013. Seasonal climate predictability and forecasting: Status and prospects. WIREs Climate Change 4: 245–268.

Dong, Y., S. Hu, and J. Zhu. 2018. From source credibility to risk perception: how and when climate information matters to action. Resources Conservation & Recycling 136: 410–417. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resconrec.2018.05.012 .

Duong, T. T., T. Brewer, J. Luck, and K. Zander. 2019. A global review of farmers’ perceptions of agricultural risks and risk management strategies. Agriculture . https://doi.org/10.3390/agriculture9010010 .

Feldman, S., and R. Welsh. 1995. Feminist knowledge claims, local knowledge, and gender divisions of agricultural labor: construction a successor science. Rural Sociology 60(1): 23–43.

Gardezi, M., and J. G. Arbuckle. 2018. Techno-optimism and farmers’ attitudes toward climate change adaptation. Environment and Behavior 52(1): 82–105. https://doi.org/10.1177/0013916518793482 .

Gosnell, H., N. Gill, and M. Voyer. 2019. Transformational adaptation on the farm: processes of change and persistence in transitions to climate-smart regenerative agriculture. Global Environmental Change-Human and Policy Dimensions 59. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2019.101965 .

Goulet, F. 2013. Narratives of experience and production of knowledge within farmers’ groups. Journal of Rural Studies 32: 439–447. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2013.09.006 .

Haigh, T., E. Takle, J. Andresen, M. Widhalm, J. S. Carlton, and J. Angel. 2017. Mapping the decision points and climate information use of agricultural producer across the U.S. corn belt. Climate Risk Management 7: 20–30.

Hardaker, J., R. B. M. Huirne, and J. Anderson. 2004. Coping with Risk in Agriculture (2nd edition). Cab International, Wallingford, UK.

Harwood, J., R. Heifner, K. Coble, P. Perry, and A. Somwaru. 1999. Managing risk in farming: concepts, research and analysis. Market and Trade Economics Division and Resource Economics Division . Economic Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture. Agricultural Economic Report No. 774.

Hassanein, N. 1997. Networking knowledge in the sustainable agriculture movement: some implications of the gender dimension. Society and Natural Resources 10(3): 251–257. https://doi.org/10.1080/08941929709381024 .

Hassanein, N. 1999. Changing the way America farms: knowledge and community in the sustainable agriculture movement . Lincoln: University of Nebraska.

Google Scholar  

Hay, J. 2007. Extreme weather and climate events, and farming risks. In Managing weather and climate risks in agriculture, eds. Sivakumar , 1–19. Berlin Heidelberg: Springer-. Motha, R. P.

Hesse-Biber, S. N., and P. Leavy. 2006. The practice of qualitative research . Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Ingram, J. 2008. Are farmers in England equipped to meet the knowledge challenge of sustainable soil management? An analysis of farmer and advisor views. Journal of Environmental Management 86(1): 214–228. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2006.12.036 .

Jensco, K., B. Parker, M. Downey, T. Hadwen, A. Howell, J. Rattling Leaf, L. Edwards, A. Akyuz, D. Kluck, D. Peck, M. Rath, M. Syner, N. Umphlett, H. Wilmer, V. Barnes, D. Clabo, B. Fuchs, M. He, S. Johnson, J. Kimball, D. Longknife, D. Martin, N. Nickerson, J. Sage, and T. Fransen. 2019. Flash Drought: lessons learned from the 2017 Drought across the U.S. Northern Plains and Canadian prairies . NOAA National Integrated Drought Information System.

Jianjun, J., G. Yiwei, W. Xiaimin, and P. K. Nam. 2015. Farmer’s risk preferences and their climate change adaptation strategies in the Yongqiao District, China. Land Use Policy 47: 365–372.

Jones, L., C. Champalle, S. Chesterman, L. Cramer, and T. E. Crane. 2017. Constraining and enabling factors to using long-term climate information in decision-making. Climate Policy 17(5): 551–572.

Joyce, L. A., and N. A. Marshall. 2017. Managing Climate Change Risks in Rangeland Systems. In D. D. Briske (Ed.), Rangeland Systems: Processes, Management and Challenges (pp. 491–526). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-46709-2_15 .

Kaup, B. Z. 2008. The reflexive producer: the influence of farmer knowledge upon the use of Bt com. Rural Sociology 73(1): 62–81.

Kettle, N. P., K. Dow, S. Tuler, T. Webler, J. Whitehead, and K. M. Miller. 2014. Integrating scientific and local knowledge to inform risk-based management approaches for climate adaptation. Climate Risk Management 4–5: 17–31. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.crm.2014.07.001 .

Klemm, and T. McPherson, R.A. 2017. The development of seasonal climate forecasting for agricultural producers. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 232: 284–399. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agrformet.2016.09.005 .

Kloppenburg, J. 1991. Social theory and the de/reconstruction of agricultural science: local knowledge for an alternative agriculture. Rural Sociology 56(4): 519–548. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1549-0831.1991.tb00445.x .

Knapp, C. N., and M. Fernandez-Gimenez. 2008. Knowing the land: a review of local knowledge revealed in ranch memoirs. Rangeland Ecology & Management 61(2): 148–155.

Knapp, C. N., and M. E. Fernandez-Gimenez. 2009. Knowledge in practice: documenting rancher local knowledge in northwest Colorado. Rangeland Ecology and Management 62(6): 500–509.

Krueger, R. A. 1988. Focus groups: a practical guide for applied research . Newbury Park: Sage.

Kusunose, Y., and R. Mahmood. 2016. Imperfect forecasts and decision making in agriculture. Agricultural Systems 146: 103–110. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agsy.2016.04.006 .

Leach, M., and J. Fairhead. 2000. Fashioned forest pasts, occluded histories? Development and Change 31(1): 35–59.

Lehébel-Péron, A., P. Sidawy, E. Dounias, and B. Schatz. 2016. Attuning local and scientific knowledge in the context of global change: The case of heather honey production in southern France. Journal of Rural Studies 44: 132?142. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2016.01.005

Leichenko, R. M., K. L. O’Brien, and W. D. Soleck. 2010. Climate change and the global financial crisis: a case of double exposure. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 100(4): 963–972. https://doi.org/10.1080/00045608.2010.497340 .

Lemos, M., and B. J. Morehouse. 2005. The co-production of science and policy in integrated climate assessments. Global Environmental Change 15(1): 57–68. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2004.09.004 .

Lemos, M., C. Kirchhoff, and V. Ramprasad. 2012. Narrowing the climate information usability gap. Nature Climate Change 2: 789–794. https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate1614 .

Letson, D., I. Llovet, G. Podesta, F. Royce, V. Brescia, D. Lema, and G. Parellada. 2001. User perspectives of climate forecasts: crop producers in Pergamino, Argentina. Climate Research 19: 57–67.

Liu, E. M. 2013. Time to change what to sow: risk preferences and technology adaption decisions of cotton farmers in China. The Review of Economics and Statistics 95(4): 1386–1403.

Lu, J., M. C. Lemos, V. Koundinya, and L. S. Prokopy. 2022. Scaling up co-produced climate-driven decision support tools for agriculture. Nature Sustainability 5: 254–262. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-021-00825-0 .

Lyon, A., M. M. Bell, C. Gratton, and R. Jackson. 2011. Farming without a recipe: Wisconsin graziers and new directions for agricultural science. Journal of Rural Studies 27(4): 384–393. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2011.04.002 .

Mase, A. S., and L. S. Prokopy. 2014. Unrealized potential: a review of perceptions and use of weather and climate information in agricultural decision making. Weather Climate and Society 6(1): 47–61. https://doi.org/10.1175/WCAS-D-12-00062.1 .

Mase, A. S., B. M. Graming, and L. S. Prokopy. 2017. Climate change beliefs, risk perceptions, and adaption behavior among midwestern U.S. crop farmers. Climate Risk Management 15: 8–17.

Meadow, A. M., D. B. Ferguson, Z. Guido, A. Horangic, G. Owen, and T. Wall. 2015. Moving toward the deliberate coproduction of climate science knowledge. Weather Climate and Society 7(2): 179–191. https://doi.org/10.1175/WCAS-D-14-00050.1 .

Menapace, L., G. Colson, and R. Raffaelli. 2016. A comparison of hypothetical risk attitude elicitation instruments for explaining farmer crop insurance purchases. European Review of Agricultural Economics 43(1): 113–135.

Menzie, K. 2007. Methods of evaluating agrometeorological risks and uncertainties for estimating global agricultural supply and demand. In Managing weather and climate risks in agriculture, eds. Sivakumar , 125–140. Berlin Heidelberg: Springer-. Motha, R. P., 125-140. Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.

Chapter   Google Scholar  

Meza, F. J., J. W. Hansen, and D. Osgood. 2008. Economic value of seasonal climate forecasts for agriculture: review of ex-ante assessments and recommendations for future research. Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology 47: 1269–1286.

Morgan, D. L. 1996. Focus groups. Annual Review of Sociology 22(1): 129–152.

Morgan, K., and J. Murdoch. 2000. Organic vs. conventional agriculture: knowledge, power and innovation in the food chain. Geoforum 31: 159–173. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0016-7185(99)00029-9 .

Morton, L. W., J. M. McGuire, and A. D. Cast. 2017a. A good farmer pays attention to the weather. Climate Risk Management 15: 18–31.

Morton, L. W., G. Roesch-McNally, and A. K. Wilke. 2017b. Upper Midwest farmer perceptions: too much uncertainty about impacts of climate change to justify changing current agricultural practices. Journal of Soil and Water Conservation 72(3): 215–225. https://doi.org/10.2489/jswc.72.3.215 .

Moschini, G., and D. Hennessy. 2001. Uncertainty, risk aversion and risk management for agricultural producers. In Handbook of Agricultural Economics, eds , eds. B. Gardner, and Rausser. 87–153. Amsterdam: Elsevier Science.

Murphy, D., C. Wyborn, L. Yung, D. R. Williams, C. C. Cleveland, L. A. Eby, S. Dobrowski, and E. Towler. 2016. Engaging communities and climate futures with multi-scale, iterative scenario building (MISB) in the Western US. Human Organization 1(75): 33–46.

Naess, L. O. 2013. The role of local knowledge in adaptation to climate change. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews-Climate Change 4: 99–106. https://doi.org/10.1002/Wcc.204 .

National Agricultural Statistics Service. 2017. 2016 agriculture overview . https://www.nass.usda.gov/Quick_Stats/Ag_Overview/stateOverview.php?state=MONTANA . Accessed 4 December, 2017.

National Agricultural Statistics Service. 2020. 2019 agriculture overview . https://www.nass.usda.gov/Quick_Stats/Ag_Overview/stateOverview.php?state=MONTANA . Accessed 1 December 2020.

(USDM) National Drought Mitigation Center; U.S. Department of Agriculture; National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. 2022. United States Drought Monitor. University of Nebraska-Lincoln. https://data.nal.usda.gov/dataset/united-states-drought-monitor . Accessed 2022-11-29.

O’Brien, K., and R. Leichenko. 2000. Double exposure: assessing the impacts of climate change within the context of economic globalization. Global Environmental Change 10: 221–232.

Oreszczyn, S., A. Lane, and S. Carr. 2010. The role of networks of practice and webs of influencers on farmers’ engagement with and learning about agricultural innovations. Journal of Rural Studies 26(4): 404–417. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2010.03.003 .

Pannell, D., and F. M. Vanclay. 2011. Changing land management: multiple perspectives on a multifaceted issue. In Changing Land Management , eds. D. Pannell, and F. Vanclay. 1–10. CSIRO Publishing.

Parks, M., G. Roesch-McNally, and A. Garrett. 2021. Bridging scientific and experiential knowledges via participatory climate adaptation research: a case study of dry farmers in Oregon. Journal of Agriculture Food Systems and Community Development 10(3): 187–203. https://doi.org/10.5304/jafscd.2021.103.015 .

Prokopy, L. S., J. S. Carlton, T. Haigh, M. C. Lemos, A. S. Mase, and M. Widhalm. 2017. Useful to useable: developing usable climate science for agriculture. Climate Risk Management 15: 1–7.

Reid, S., B. Smit, and W. Caldwell. 2007. Vulnerability and adaptation to climate risks in Ontario agriculture. Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change 12: 609–637. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11027-006-9051-8 .

Ríos-González, A., K. Jansen, and H. J. Sánchez-Pérez. 2013. Pesticide risk perceptions and the differences between farmers and extensionists . Towards a knowledge-in-context model. Environmental Research 124: 43-53. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envres.2013.03.006.

Roesch-McNally, G. E. 2018. US Inland Pacific Northwest wheat farmers’ perceived risks: Motivating intentions to adapt to climate change? Environments 5(4): 49. https://doi.org/10.3390/environments5040049 .

Saldana, J. 2021. The coding manual for qualitative researchers (4th Edition). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Shipley, N. J., W. P. Stewart, and C. J. van Riper. 2022. Negotiating agricultural change in the Midwestern US: seeking compatibility between farmer narratives of efficiency and legacy. Agriculture and Human Values 39: 1465–1476.

Shrum, T. R., W. R. Travis, T. M. Williams, and E. Lih. 2018. Managing climate risks on the ranch with limited drought information. Climate Risk Management 20: 11–26. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.crm.2018.01.002 .

Smit, B., and M. Skinner. 2002. Adaptation options in agriculture to climate change: a typology. Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change 7: 85–114. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1015862228270 .

Smith, A. P., L. Yung, A. Snitker, R. K. Bocinsky, E. C. Mecalf, and K. Jencso. 2021. Scalar mismatches and underlying factors for underutilization of climate information: Perspectives from farmers and ranchers. Frontiers in Climate 3(29).

Sumane, S., I. Kunda, K. Knickel, A. Strauss, T. Tisenkopfs, I. Rios, M. Rivera, T. Chebach, and A. Ashkenazy. 2018. Local and farmers’ knowledge matters! How integrating informal and formal knowledge enhances sustainable and resilient agriculture. Journal of Rural Studies 59: 232–241. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2017.01.020 .

Travis, W. R., and B. Bates. 2014. What is climate risk management? Climate Risk Management 1: 1–4. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.crm.2014.02.003 .

Umphlett, N. A., M. Woloszyn, B. A. Parker, F. A. Akyuz, A. R. Bergantino, S. Brotherson, D. Crow Ghost, M. Downey, L. Edwards, T. Hadwen, Z. Hoylman, K. Jencso, W. Kelley, A. Klein, A. Kluck, D. Longknife, D. Low, K. Mahmood, R. Meehan, M. Rush, and G. Stiles, C.J.,Tangen. S. 2022. 2020–2021 Drought in the U.S. Northern Plains and Canadian prairies: initial Assessment of impacts and Response to build Resilience during an Ongoing Drought . NOAA National Integrated Drought Information System.

United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). 2018. https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-practices-management/risk-management/government-programs-risk/ . Accessed 15 June 2019.

Wall, T. U., A. M. Meadow, and A. Horganic. 2017. Developing evaluation indicators to improve the process of coproducing usable climate science. Weather Climate and Society 9(1): 95–107. https://doi.org/10.1175/WCAS-D-16-0008.1 .

Walthall, C. L., J. Hatfield, P. Backlund, L. Lengnick, E. Marshall, M. Walsh,…, and L. H. Ziska. 2013. Climate Change and Agriculture in the United States: effects and Adaptation. USDA Technical Bulletin 1935 . Washington, DC: Climate Change Program Office, Agricultural Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Whitlock, C., W. Cross, B. Maxwell, N. Silverman, and A. A. Wade. 2017. 2017 Montana Climate Assessment. Bozeman and Missoula MT: Montana State University and University of Montana, Montana Institute on Ecosystems. https://doi.org/10.15788/m2ww8w

Wilke, A. K., and L. W. Morton. 2017. Analog years: connecting climate science agricultural tradition to better manage landscapes of the future. Climate Risk Management 15: 32–44.

Wilson, S. 2017. August 1. 12% of Montana is in exceptional drought — a once-in-a-century event, NOAA scientist says. Billings Gazette . http://billingsgazette.com/news/local/of-montana-is-in-exceptional-drought-a-once-in-a/article_0e7a18e9-09d7-54db-b371-bf91aef4fd98.html .

Yung, L., N. Phear, A. DuPont, J. Montag, and D. Murphy. 2015. Drought adaptation and climate change beliefs amongst working ranchers in Montana. Weather Climate and Society 7(4): 281–293.

Download references

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank all the Montana farmers and ranchers who participated in focus groups. We greatly appreciate their time and insight.

This research was supported by the Montana Climate Office, the UM BRIDGES program, the United States Department of Agriculture National Institutes on Food and Agriculture (2017-67027-26313), the National Science Foundation Division of Graduate Education (1633831), and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration National Integrated Drought Information System (University Corporation for Atmospheric Research subaward SUBAWD000858).

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Department of Society and Conservation, Franke College of Forestry and Conservation, University of Montana, Missoula, MT, 59812, USA

Adam J. Snitker, Laurie Yung, Elizabeth Covelli Metcalf, R. Kyle Bocinsky, Ada P. Smith & Austin Schuver

Montana Climate Office, University of Montana, Missoula, MT, 59812, USA

Kelsey Jensco

Environmental Studies Program, University of Montana, Missoula, MT, 59812, USA

Neva Hassanein

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Adam J. Snitker .

Ethics declarations

Competing interest.

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Additional information

Focus groups were reviewed and approved by University of Montana Institutional Review Board for the Protection of Human Subjects in Research. The participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study.

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Electronic supplementary material

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

Supplementary Material 1

Supplementary material 2, rights and permissions.

Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Snitker, A.J., Yung, L., Metcalf, E.C. et al. How agricultural producers use local knowledge, climate information, and on-farm “experiments” to address drought risk. Agric Hum Values (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-024-10582-3

Download citation

Accepted : 15 April 2024

Published : 28 June 2024

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-024-10582-3

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Drought risk
• Seasonal climate forecasts
• Agricultural adaptation
• Climate services
• Climate information
• Agricultural decision-making
• Find a journal
• Publish with us
• Track your research

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

• View all journals
• Explore content
• About the journal
• Publish with us
• Sign up for alerts
• 15 November 2022

Farming feeds the world. We desperately need to know how to do it better

You have full access to this article via your institution.

The potential benefits of digital agriculture to small-holder farmers are difficult to determine owing to a shortage of evidence. Credit: Adriana Adie/NurPhoto/Getty

How effective is ‘digital agriculture’? What, for example, are the benefits of sending weather forecasts to smallholder farmers’ phones? Does the digital approach improve nutrition or make agriculture more sustainable? Does it help farmers adapt to climate change, a priority for the negotiations taking place this week at the 27th United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP27) in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt?

The honest answer to these questions is that we can’t yet be sure. That’s partly because of a lack of evidence — the needs of small-scale farmers are under-researched, as a project called Ceres2030 reported in 2020 (see go.nature.com/3o5hgl7). What’s more, the rules for evidence in policy for agriculture, food systems and climate adaptation are not as systematic as they are in policy for health and medicine.

In a welcome development, that might be about to change. Three organizations are creating a network called the Juno Evidence Alliance — its name a nod to its origins in the Ceres2030 project, both being named after Roman goddesses. It is a collaboration between CABI, a non-profit intergovernmental organization that collates agricultural information, headquartered in Wallingford, UK; the University of Notre Dame in Indiana; and Havos.ai, a company specializing in machine learning for evidence synthesis, based in Washington DC and Ithaca, New York. The collaboration has obtained US$3 million in funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for this and related projects, and the UK government says it also plans to fund the alliance.

Natural solutions for agricultural productivity

Juno will be launched early next year. Its first project will be to assess the literature on nutrition, agriculture and climate change. Specifically, it will identify the areas in which research is and isn’t meeting people’s needs. After that, its creators want to develop guidance for researchers on the principles of evidence synthesis, and how to produce research that can be easily compared with other studies. Juno will also train people in evidence-synthesis skills.

Moreover, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) last month announced plans to publish a biennial Agrifood Systems Technologies and Innovations Outlook (see go.nature.com/3hgixy7). According to Chris Barrett, an agricultural economist at Cornell University, Ithaca, and one of the project’s leaders, this will explore topical questions such how widespread the use of drones is in agriculture in the global south, and how common it is for countries to fortify salt with iodine, an effective way to reduce iodine deficiency. Subject to funding, both initiatives will use machine-learning algorithms; in Juno’s case, to do much of the literature mining. Mary O’Connor, who oversees evidence innovation for CABI, says that artificial intelligence could reduce the time it takes to conduct an evidence review to 6–8 months, compared with the 18 months to 2 years it usually takes.

Efforts to publish more research, find and fill knowledge gaps, and improve evidence synthesis are clearly overdue. The committees of researchers who guide decision-makers and regulatory bodies around the world, including those in international organizations such as the FAO, are faced with an applied life-sciences literature that exceeds 10 million records in English alone. Reviews summarizing the work on many topics are few and far between.

It can be hard for decision-makers to compare the conclusions of separate studies. Different studies can use different evaluation indicators. At its most basic, there might not even be agreement on the definition of terms — for instance, the meaning of ‘small-scale farmer’ varies from study to study, if it is defined at all. This means that farmers, donors, non-governmental organizations and governments struggle to find reliable answers to their questions.

The task ahead

The Juno team should draw on the experiences of other fields, particularly medicine. Cochrane, a charity based in London, has been conducting and publishing health-care evidence reviews since the 1990s. These are used by, among others, the World Health Organization (WHO) in its guidelines for doctors and patients. Only last month, the WHO announced an update to pregnancy and childbirth guidelines informed by Cochrane’s work . There’s also the Campbell Collaboration, a network of social scientists, which produces evidence synthesis on social-policy interventions in fields ranging from education to policing.

But evidence synthesis in food-systems science faces challenges that don’t affect medicine, in which so much research is underpinned by randomized placebo-controlled trials. The Juno project will need to establish a common language to categorize basic and applied science across human health and nutrition, the microbiome, plant health, soil science, aspects of climate science and more.

Grape expectations: making Australian wine more sustainable

Its researchers will need to seek out science from scattered repositories; capture the wealth of untapped research in non-European languages; and track down researchers (including farmers who also do research) who collect data but do not publish work in journals. They will need to find reliable ways to assess the quality of the individual studies that act as inputs to the reviews, and find methods that account for bias. Some of those who specialize in agricultural science can be oblivious to the ways that thinking on subjects such as livestock rearing, genetic modification and the farming of indigenous crops is influenced by ethical, cultural and political forces, says Sheryl Hendriks, a food-security policy expert at the University of Pretoria in South Africa.

Evidence synthesis also needs long-term funding, international acceptance and an institutional home, as Joachim von Braun, an agricultural economist at the University of Bonn in Germany, tells Nature . “These initiatives need legitimacy, otherwise governments will not listen to their advice,” he says. The FAO said in a statement that it will “explore synergies and potential partnerships” in this area.

There is growing recognition of the need to tackle climate, nutrition and agriculture in an integrated manner, rather than in silos. The UN Food Systems Summit of 2021 brought together organizations from across these fields, and COP27 has an unprecedented focus on agriculture. As those working in the food system tackle challenges ranging from climate change to soil erosion to population growth, the need for more, better and more-systematic evidence to underpin their efforts is only going to increase.

Nature 611 , 425-426 (2022)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-03694-5

Reprints and permissions

Related Articles

• Agriculture
• Sustainability
• Climate change

How farming could become the ultimate climate-change tool

Spotlight 19 JUN 24

How to address agriculture’s water woes

Organic product legislation ignores agricultural plastic use — that must change

Correspondence 04 JUN 24

The surprising driver of Amazon deforestation

Research Highlight 02 JUL 24

The global refugee crisis is above all a human tragedy — but it affects wildlife, too

Correspondence 18 JUN 24

Extending the Sustainable Development Goals to 2050 — a road map

Comment 17 JUN 24

Climate change is worsening the housing crisis — we must tackle the two together

World View 02 JUL 24

Deep-sea dye confirms turbulent-mixing theory — with implications for climate

News & Views 26 JUN 24

Explainable El Niño predictability from climate mode interactions

Article 26 JUN 24

Postdoctoral / Research Scientist / Research Assistant positions in Molecular Immunology

Postdoctoral / Research Scientist / Research Assistant positions in Molecular Immunology / Cancer Immunology

Dallas, Texas (US)

The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center (UT Southwestern Medical Center)

Alzheimer's Disease (AD) Researcher/Associate Researcher

Xiaoliang Sunney XIE’s Group is recruiting researchers specializing in Alzheimer's disease (AD).

Beijing, China

Changping Laboratory

Osaka University Immunology Frontier Research Center Postdoctoral Researcher

IFReC, Osaka University in Japan offers Advanced Postdoc Positions for Immunology, Cell Biology, Bioinformatics and Bioimaging.

Suita Campus, Osaka University in Osaka, Japan

Immunology Frontier Research Center, Osaka University

PostDoc Researcher, Magnetic Recording Materials Group, National Institute for Materials Science

Starting date would be after January 2025, but it is negotiable.

Tsukuba, Japan (JP)

National Institute for Materials Science

Tenure-Track/Tenured Faculty Positions

Tenure-Track/Tenured Faculty Positions in the fields of energy and resources.

Suzhou, Jiangsu, China

School of Sustainable Energy and Resources at Nanjing University

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Quick links

• Explore articles by subject
• Guide to authors
• Editorial policies

• Election 2024
• Entertainment
• Newsletters
• Photography
• AP Investigations
• AP Buyline Personal Finance
• AP Buyline Shopping
• Press Releases
• Israel-Hamas War
• Russia-Ukraine War
• Global elections
• Asia Pacific
• Latin America
• Middle East
• Election Results
• Delegate Tracker
• AP & Elections
• Auto Racing
• 2024 Paris Olympic Games
• Movie reviews
• Book reviews
• Financial Markets
• Business Highlights
• Financial wellness
• Artificial Intelligence
• Social Media

Research gives more reassurance that milk pasteurization kills bird flu, officials say

FILE - Thermometers are seen atop a small-scale pasteurizer in Plainfield, Vt., on March 13, 2012. On Friday, June 28, 2024, U.S. officials said a new study provides reassurance that pasteurization kills bird flu virus in cow’s milk. (AP Photo/Toby Talbot)

• Copy Link copied

NEW YORK (AP) — A new study that recreated commercial pasteurization in a government lab provides reassurance that heat treatment kills bird flu virus in cow’s milk, U.S. officials said Friday.

When the bird flu known as H5N1 was first detected in U.S. dairy cows earlier this year, there were no studies of whether heat treatment killed the virus in cows milk. But officials were comforted by studies that showed the pasteurization of eggs — which involves heating at a lower temperature and for a shorter amount of time – worked, said the Food and Drug Administration’s Donald Prater.

A study in April found that there was no evidence of infectious, live virus in store-bought samples of pasteurized milk, though they did contain dead remnants of it. Some later small studies that attempted to simulate pasteurization showed mixed results.

The new study was done at a federal research center in Athens, Georgia, using custom equipment that tried to more completely recreate commercial pasteurization.

It also allowed sampling at different stages in the process. The milk goes through several heating steps before being flash-heated, and the study found the virus was inactivated even before it hit the 161-degree, 15-or-more-seconds “flash pasteurization” stage that is considered the key step in making milk safe.

“This information really fills an important gap in our understanding of how commercial pasteurization inactivates the virus,” Prater said.

The study has been not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

• Request Info
• Current Students
• Faculty and Staff
• Find your Degree
• Student Services
• Scholarships
• Graduate Programs
• Online Learning
• Study Abroad
• Start Something CALS
• Clubs and Organizations
• Office of Inclusive Excellence
• Learning Communities
• Research Showcase
• Support For Researchers
• Research and Demonstration Farms
• Administration
• Departments and Centers
• Lecture Series
• Satellite Campuses
• Strategic Planning

Horticulture Research Station to host inaugural prairie field day

By Madelyn Ostendorf

Have you ever wanted to see a piece of the prairies that used to span the Midwest? The Iowa State University Horticulture Research Station, located north of Ames, is hosting an event to give you that opportunity.  

Scheduled for July 16, Prairie Field Day 2024 will feature several guest speakers and onsite tours of the three prairie projects currently at the station - the remnant prairie, the reconstructed prairie and the Department of Natural Resources prairie seed production project.

Nick Howell, superintendent of the Horticulture Research Station, said he is excited to welcome new faces and introduce them to the impact of prairies on the environment.  

“There's nothing more useful in the environment than prairie for things like carbon sequestration,” Howell said. “Prairies can have a huge part in fixing environmental issues. It’s why Iowa has such beautiful soils. It was all prairie at one point.”

Event attendees will see a piece of newly discovered prairie remnant at the Horticulture Research Station. Prairie remnant refers to an area of original prairie that has remained relatively undisturbed, rather than a reconstructed prairie created to emulate an original prairie.

This area of remnant prairie thrives near the 15-acre lake that spans the middle of the Horticulture Research Station. When the lake was built in the 1950s, the workers managed to avoid destroying the natural prairie.  

In January 2020, Howell was working on improving the lake’s habitat for fish when he, along with Adam Janke and Michael Weber, professor of natural resource ecology and management, noticed some interesting seed pods on the ground. Janke, extension wildlife specialist, thought they might be the seeds of some prairie indicator plants.  

“When I got here in 2006, there was so much brush grown up around this area that I couldn’t even access it,” Howell

 said. “We’ve been working on cutting back the woody growths, doing some burns to clean up the area, and we’ve discovered that we really have something here.”

Rachel Sents, ‘24 horticulture, has spent the past eight months working on funds acquisition and management of the remnant and reconstruction prairies at the Horticulture Research Station. She currently works as a wildlife management specialist with the Iowa DNR Brushy Creek Wildlife Unit.

“I grew up in Iowa and spent most of my time outdoors,” Sents said. “A lot of the wild spaces we have here are wooded, and I want more people to see the beauty and biodiversity of Iowa’s prairies. You don’t have to go to places like Colorado to see something incredible.”

Sents organized the field day as a result of some grants she secured and said she is excited to be planning an event to showcase the prairies.

“We have some great speakers lined up,” Sents said. “It’s one of those things that I have had to learn as I went, and I’m really proud of how it has come together.”

The event will feature several guest speakers, including:

• Laura Miner, Iowa Prairie Network secretary and Iowa DNR Technician 2 at the Prairie Resource Center
• Brian Wisley, Iowa State University, professor of ecology, evolution and organismal biology
• Tom Rosburg, Drake University, professor of biology and Iowa prairie expert
• Bill Johnson, Iowa DNR, wildlife biologist
• Lisa Schulte-Moore, Iowa State University, professor of natural resource ecology and management and cofounder of Science-based Trials of Row crops Integrated with Prairie Strips (STRIPS) project
• Adam Janke, Iowa State University, associate professor of natural resource ecology and management and wildlife extension specialist.

Registration for Prairie Field Day 2024 closes July 9. Attendees should expect to walk through tall grass and uneven terrain, and long pants and boots are recommended.