The US Department of Agriculture has included a request in the 2015 Budget to establish three public-private innovation institutes funded at $25m per annum, covering biobased product manufacturing, pollinator health, and anti-microbial resistance research.
The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has included a budget request to establish three new research institutes as part of a drive towardscreating “an innovation ecosystem for agricultural research.” Under the proposal, “consortia of private companies, universities, and researchers from the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) could compete for large grants with support guaranteed for no less than 5 years to allow for bold new research investments.”
The budget request was reported in ScienceInsider. A statement [http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/usda/usdahome?contentid=2014/03/0033.xml&navid=NEWS_RELEASE&navtype=RT&parentnav=LATEST_RELEASES&edeployment_action=retrievecontent]in March from US Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack on the proposed FY 2015 Budget explains: “The 2015 budget makes strategic investments that further innovation and encourage creative approaches to solving rural America’s most pressing challenges. The budget provides increased funding of $325 million for our premier competitive grants program to support the cutting edge research that will help producers adapt and succeed in the face of modern challenges, including a changing climate. It also provides $25 million each to three public-private innovation institutes that focus on biobased product manufacturing, pollinator health, and anti-microbial resistance research, respectively.”
The proposals for research institutes was originally set out in a December 2012 report [http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/pcast_agriculture_20121207.pdf]from the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), an advisory group of US scientists and engineers, appointed by the President. The report includes recommendations on how to “improve agriculturalpreparedness and maintain US leadership in agriculture”. Recommendation 4, for moving towards an innovation ecosystem for agricultural research, is to “create six large, multidisciplinary innovation institutes focused on emerging challenges to agriculture, supported by public private partnerships at an initial new Federal investment of $150 million per year to create six institutes at a funding level of $25 million per year for no less than 5 years.”
The report sets out the background to the recommendation: “There is no overarching structure in the United States that supports sustained, interactive research between public and private scientists interested in agricultural challenges as there is in fields such as nanotechnology and biofuels. Such a structure needs to be built and will likely require a clear definition of research responsibility for each aspect of the research, from conception to handling of data and publication. An open environment of investigation and publication is usually most beneficial, although the need to protect proprietary aspects of research must be considered for businesses to participate fully. The ultimate goal, however, needs to be a new structure for sustained close cooperation among all participants to expedite research. Such efforts should not be in areas where private research is already active as the issues relate directly to product development.
“New private public partnerships should be created around those emerging challenges that do have some commercial interest, but that cannot be easily monetized in the short term. The USDA can begin immediately to invest in research toward meeting the challenges described earlier by establishing new innovation institutes supported by public private partnerships, focused on addressing the specific challenges to agriculture. USDA could model these institutes after the bioenergy institutes established by DOE and BP or after the energy hubs and energy frontier research centers established by DOE. Consortia of private companies, universities, and researchers from the ARS could compete for large grants with support guaranteed for no less than 5 years to allow for bold new research investments. The research focus of each innovation institute must be on problems in the public domain, but where private sector participation can be important in advancing the research goals and also deploying the research outcomes.”
