A new US Department of Agriculture (USDA) institute for basic research, recommended in a July 2004 departmental task force report, has received widespread support among agriculture interest groups and other stakeholders. Some, however, want to make sure that funding is new and is not siphoned from the USDA budget, or from the budget of an already existing basic science funding body at USDA.

The National Institute for Food and Agriculture (NIFA) would fund extramural, peer-reviewed basic research, employing a model much like the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. NIFA's objectives, according to the report, include: nurturing American agriculture that's more competitive internationally, developing foods that improve health and combat obesity, developing bio-based fuels, and improving food safety by protecting plants from insects, diseases, and bioterrorism.

"The idea is that there needs to be a really big, fairly autonomous institute that isn't subject to all the political pressures that all the things inside the department are," said Martin Apple, president of the Council of Scientific Society Presidents and one of several consultants on the report. Traditionally, most USDA research funds are doled out regionally, often to land-grant universities, based on the requests of congressmen and senators looking to funnel funds to high-priority projects in their respective states.

Robin Schoen, acting director of the National Academies' board on agriculture and natural resources, noted that scientists sometimes turn away from USDA research grants, which, unlike NSF and NIH grants, don't provide funds for overhead expenses.

In a November 12 letter to President Bush, the National Coalition for Food and Agriculture Research (National C-FAR) endorsed NIFA. The National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges did likewise in an October 18 letter to the president. And the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) endorsed the plan in a letter to the Secretary of Agriculture, Ann Veneman. "The NIH has been a successful experiment, and we'd like to see it replicated at the Department of Agriculture," FASEB President Paul Kincade told The Scientist.

Despite the widespread support, some are concerned that a new institute could harm a USDA that has struggled through years of stagnant budgets to help provide Americans with cheap, high-quality food. "We're not opposed to such a research program," said Patricia Buschette, director of government affairs at the National Association of Wheat Growers. "But in an environment of limited resources, we have to be careful."

Both the letters from National C-FAR and from the land grant college association emphasized that NIFA funding should supplement, not replace, existing USDA research programs. Tom Van Arsdall, National C-FAR liaison, notes that many of the organization's members have expressed concern that a new institute would siphon away funds from other USDA research programs. The Coalition on Funding Agricultural Research Missions has the same concern, Karl Glasener, the organization's chairman, told The Scientist.

Glasener worried that a new institute could threaten the current USDA mechanism of basic research funding, the National Research Initiative (NRI), which was founded in 1991 based on the recommendations of a 1989 National Academy of Sciences report. Although $500 million in annual funding has been authorized for the NRI, thus far it has actually received considerably less—a projected $180 million for the upcoming year would be the biggest allocation to date. The National Academy of Sciences actually first called for an expanded USDA basic research competitive grants program in a 1972 report.

Supporters contend that NIFA will bring a better focus to basic agricultural research. "What we're talking about here is elevating research on food and nutrition to a new height, and that's always been the province of the USDA," said Peter Raven, director of the Missouri Botanical Garden and a consultant on the report. "It's not simply scrapping for dollars in an amorphous way, which the [NRI] could be cartooned as being."

Others in National C-FAR, said Van Arsdall, have hesitated to offer support to NIFA because their area of research does not appear to be included in NIFA's mission. William Danforth, chair of the task force that came up with the report, said he has received such feedback. He contended, however, that the panel's objective was to set up a conceptual framework for the institute, not list which fields would be funded.

"We're not totally naïve," Danforth, a professor of internal medicine at Washington University in St. Louis, told The Scientist. "We recognize that everything depends on budget, and budgets are very tight. On the other hand, I would argue that agriculture is terribly important to our country, everything from balancing trade, to protecting our environment, to food safety and anti-terrorism."