2. Public-Private Research Programs
Agribusiness has increasingly sought federal funding for public-private research programs. The most significant example of this is a nonprofit non-governmental organization called the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research (FFAR), established by the 2014 Farm Bill to support “agricultural research focused on addressing key problems of national and international significance,” including, among other focus areas, renewable resources, natural resources, and the environment.46 Designed to spur public-private partnerships, Congress allocated FFAR $200 million to use as matching funds for nonfederal dollars.47 FFAR has six “challenge areas” on which to focus its efforts, including “soil health,” which is likely to benefit mitigation strategies due to the relationship between healthy soil and soil carbon sequestration.48 FFAR announced its first healthy soils, thriving farms investment in March 2017, a $2.2 million grant that was matched with $4.4 million from a private foundation to create the National Cover Crop Initiative.49
Despite FFAR’s potential to advance research into mitigation strategies, efforts to increase the private sector’s involvement in public research should be evaluated carefully.
Private-industry research funding is often driven by business interests. Not surprisingly, privately funded agricultural research is focused on technologies that are part of patentable products or services and it neglects research objectives—such as conservation of natural resources— that are unlikely to be profitable for private industry.50 As a result, despite being advertised as win-win propositions for farmers and the environment, public-private research partnerships too often fail both. Unlike the public— or farmers—large corporations are able to advance their own priorities by directly contributing funds to public-private research efforts or by providing funding for private foundations and nonprofits to do so.While FFAR shows some promise, it has yet to demonstrate its independence from industry interests.
Rather than funding research that would benefit diversified, sustainable systems, it has largely funded projects friendly to agribusiness. For example, it awarded the National Pork Board almost $1 million for research aimed at reducing hog mortality in commercial concentrated121
animal feeding operations (CAFOs),51 and contributed $5 million to the industry-supported Irrigation Innovation Consortium.52 Efforts such as these may sound laudable, but they effectively subsidize corporate interests and reinforce inherently unsustainable systems. Hog CAFOs will continue to cause significant environmental and public health harms regardless of hog mortality rates, and the type of projects generally funded by the Irrigation Innovation Consortium, such as precision irrigation,53 have been found often to actually increase water usage rather than decrease it.54 FFAR has also funded more promising projects, however. In 2020, the foundation awarded University of Minnesota a $1 million grant to help accelerate the development of a promising perennial wheatgrass, Kernza,55 which researchers hope will be able to dramatically reduce net agricultural emissions.56 Congress should ensure that FFAR funds primarily support research projects aimed at redesigning systems based on proven carbon farming principles, such as longer crop rotations, agroforestry, and integrated crop-livestock systems.57
More on the topic 2. Public-Private Research Programs:
- 1. Federal Research Programs
- 3. State Research and Demonstration Programs
- 7. Improving Coordination Among Research, Extension, and Technical Assistance Programs
- A. Research, Extension, and Technical Assistance Programs
- B. Public Subsidy and Conservation Programs
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