USDA Researchers Seek to Change Funding Method
By Ellyn Ferguson | CQ Roll Call | April 17, 2013

 

 

The Agricultural Research Service is ruffling feathers among members of the House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees its funding with its proposal to change the way Congress provides money for the agency to build and maintain research centers.

Instead of taking years to accumulate enough money to move ahead on projects, ARS has decided that it will ask for full funding for selected projects. For fiscal 2014, the agency is requesting $155 million to replace a poultry research facility in Athens, Ga. Poultry is Georgia’s top agricultural product, and the state leads the nation in poultry production.

The facility is among 21 that the research agency has identified as priority projects to be addressed. In future years, the agency will ask for full funding for two to three projects on the list, depending on their total price tag.

ARS also proposes to close one facility in Arkansas and consolidate six others elsewhere in the country.

Members of the House Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee acknowledged that an agency can spend years waiting for Congress to provide enough money to start or finish a project. They asked Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack about the poultry project when he appeared before the committee on Tuesday and questioned officials from the department’s research division on Wednesday.

“The reason we’ve done what we’ve done with the poultry facility is to basically say to Congress is if we are going to fund something, let’s fund it, and let’s not sprinkle the money between different pots,” Vilsack said Tuesday. “In that circumstance, nothing ever gets done.”

Chairman Robert B. Aderholt, ranking Democrat Sam Farr and other panel members wanted to know whether the Obama administration might seek money for other projects.

“While this subcommittee is generally supportive of investments in infrastructure for agricultural research, we need more information on how this new lab will help researchers better understand poultry diseases and improve the health of U.S. poultry,” said Aderholt, R-Ala.

Farr, D-Calif., noted that researchers in his district work in World War II-era Quonset huts but said it appeared that it would be years before the agency would seek money to replace the structures. He thought the Salinas facility should rank higher because the district is the top produce-growing area in the country.

“It’s good to point out that in a laboratory system the size of the Agricultural Research Service, our buildings and facilities are a continuous project,” said Catherine E. Woteki, chief scientist and undersecretary for research, education and economics.

ARS Administrator Edward B. Knipling said the amount requested for future capital needs will vary and will be tied to the president’s budget request each year.

“The 21 top-priority facilities, the lowest-condition facilities in need of modernization that are also housing our highest-priority facilities, we sequenced those over a period of nine years or nine funding increments of roughly $100 million to $150 million apiece. We see this as an ongoing, somewhat forever process to modernize our facilities in a systematic manner on about a 40-year cycle,” Knipling explained.

The Salinas facility would be in the fourth round of requests, Knipling said.

“I hope I’m alive by then,” Farr said.

Subcommittee members generally praised the research, education and economics division for the scientific and analytic work it produces. The Agriculture Department is requesting a total of $2.8 billion for its four research agencies: Agricultural Research Service, National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Economic Research Service and National Agricultural Statistics Service. The request represents a $410 million increase from the fiscal 2013 enacted level.

Woteki said the division has a number of obligations to meet in the face of the sequester and tighter budgets.

She said the missions include “expanding and delivering safe and nutritious food to a growing population; keeping agricultural production profitable; bolstering agricultural exports; reversing the obesity epidemic; and ensuring that our natural resources remain  available and abundant for future generations while responding to the threat of a changing climate.”

Aderholt said the testimony would help the subcommittee write its fiscal 2014 spending bill, but he pressed Sonny Ramaswamy, director of the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, to give the panel information it had requested on the scope, cost and time frame of programs, including its research grants operations.

In a written statement issued after the hearing, Aderholt warned, “We do not offer these directives and ask for this type of information without reason, and we encourage Dr. Wotecki and her colleagues to comply with these directives or this subcommittee will be forced to make the department’s research programs funding and allocation decisions without this important data.”