Guest Author
Research that created new plant varieties has saved billions of lives worldwide. And agricultural research in the U.S. saves livelihoods as well as lives.
American farmers face global competition in the produce aisle. Labor challenges disadvantage them, but research innovations keep them competitive.
Part of the beauty of agricultural research as a tool to even the playing field in international trade is that it does not punish other nations. It only lifts ours. For example, research supports a Florida citrus industry that exported $23.4 million worth of orange juice just to Canada in 2023.
Our farmers are fiercely independent. They prefer to get paid by the market instead of by the government. All they ask is for a fair market that gives them a shot at making a living. Agricultural research gives farmers the tools, techniques and talent to be the most efficient and environmentally sound producers in the world.
Farmers are the backbone of an industry that lifts America’s rural economies. Too often the places our food comes from have been left behind in economic development efforts. I support the call of Florida Senate President Ben Albritton for a “Rural Renaissance” that grows jobs and businesses near corn, citrus and blueberries.
Innovation requires investment. By some estimates, there’s a 20-to-1 payoff from every dollar we spend on agricultural research.
A half-century ago, the average U.S. farm fed 98 people. After decades of agricultural research helped farmers achieve higher yields, the average U.S. farm now feeds 169 people.
But we’re losing ground to other nations. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, inflation-adjusted U.S. investment in agricultural research has declined by a third this century. China’s investment in agricultural research has more than quadrupled since 2000 and is now double the U.S. level.
This is a national security threat. We do not ever want to become dependent on China for our food.
Yes, my call is self-serving. National funding for agricultural research supports a national network of public university research, as is the case with what is being done at the University of Florida, where I work.
But it’s also citizen-serving. Farmers around the state tell me they would not be in business were it not for the research we do on their behalf. As public universities, we take our discoveries out of the lab and share them with farmers through demonstrations, how-to manuals and even farm visits by our scientists.
And we do it with American farmers, not for them or to them. Our deep connections, rooted in decades of partnerships, allow us to get constant feedback on what problems we should be solving, what works, and what doesn’t.
Federally funded knowledge is a public good. As food production challenges become more complex, we need to generate more of it.
Those challenges include globalization. There’s an international race to feed the future, and we’re losing.
We can take a punitive approach to level the playing field in international trade in agriculture, or we can bet on American farmers and the scientists who support them. We can compete without conflict.
Every time we discover a way to grow more food on shrinking available land, and every time we extract more crop per drop, we are protecting our lands, keeping millions of Americans employed, and defending our national security by reinforcing our ability to feed ourselves.
The advent of artificial intelligence makes this a pivotal moment in agricultural research. We must apply AI to agriculture the way we’re seeing it drive breakthroughs in medicine, transportation and communication. AI is about to transform agriculture more profoundly than tractors and genetics have if we invest in harnessing it to feed us.
If we don’t do it, other nations will. And our farmers will do something else.
If farmers can’t afford to farm their land in Florida, they will sell it. We call rooftops the last crop. Once a neighborhood is built, it never goes back to farming.
Agricultural research makes it profitable to produce food, even as farmers are not paid for so much of what they give us: green space, wildlife habitats, flood protection, carbon sequestration and more.
We can’t call on farmers to build their own labs and experiment with their livelihoods. A national investment in agricultural research is the way we take the risks of innovation, invest in moonshots and put technology into the hands of people who produce our food, feed, fiber and fuel.
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J. Scott Angle, Ph.D., is the University of Florida’s senior vice president for agriculture and natural resources and leader of the UF Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS). He is a former director of the United States Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture.
