By Paul Basken, September 13, 2016
(Posted on the Chronicle of Higher Education)
Agricultural researchers — and the companies that support them — say it’s time for Congress to boost its investment in their work…Read more.
In California, five years of record-breaking drought have given way to a record-breaking winter of rain and snow that has provided farmers more water than they know what to do with. Southern Africa has had a similar experience, with record drought followed by torrential rains and floods. This change has also been accompanied by the rapid expansion of a new invasive pest—the fall armyworm.
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The Supporters of Agricultural Research (SoAR) Foundation applauds the Obama administration’s budget request of $700 million in FY2017 for the USDA’s Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI). If approved by Congress, the increase would double AFRI’s annual budget and fulfill the Congressional authorization passed eight years ago when the program was established as part of the 2008 Farm Bill.
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A few years ago, scientists monitoring insect populations began to sound the alarm that honey bees, a critical player in how plants reproduce, were disappearing in ever larger numbers. In the past year, beekeepers lost 40 percent of their colonies, and entomologists were also seeing alarming losses in wild colonies around the country.
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