Opportunities await

Science in agriculture can involve your expertise. The opportunities for applying your cutting-edge science to problems involving food, fiber, and the environment are becoming greater than you ever imagined. Thus, you may be in a position to both help shape the future of food production and to tap into new funding sources. The Board on Agriculture of the National Research Council has been taking a fresh look at the Colleges of Agriculture at the Land Grant Universities (1). The ideas examined include changes in both teaching and research. Twenty recommendations are made relative to public service and public policy. The Board’s Committee on the Future of Land Grant Colleges of Agriculture emphasizes many new perspectives; only a few can be mentioned here.

The committee emphasizes the opportunities for teaching science through agriculture. For example, do students know that “crunchiness” in lettuce relates to its cellulose content or that the orange color of carrots reflects the level of pro-vitamin A, beta-carotene? A recommendation is made that “The Federal Government should expand competitive challenge grants to creative college teachers and teaching teams to develop innovative multidisciplinary and systems-based course material and curricula.”

The report also calls on the Federal Government to significantly increase competitive grant funding of food and agricultural research projects to no less than the $500 million authorized by U.S. Congress for the National Research Initiative in Agriculture, Food, and the Environment in 1991. The program alots $94 million for 1997. This report states that the “USDA should continue its role in enhancing participation and success in competitive grants programs by all institutions to build human capital nationwide in food and agricultural research.” The committee suggests that federal programs and policies should “broaden and deepen the system’s expertise and expand access and relevancy.”

This report on Colleges of Agriculture at the Land Grant Universities: Public Service and Public Policy provides, in effect, an invitation for all scientists to consider how they can contribute their expertise in improving the sustainability of the food and agriculture system. The modern system includes production, processing, marketing, retailing, and consumption—and “the interaction of these economic activities with natural resources and the environment, human communities and their well-being, and consumer health, safety, and ethics—interactions often difficult to evaluate in economic terms, but clearly valued by contemporary society.” Nevertheless, studies indicate that returns on the investment from agricultural research are on the order of 30–50%. Multidisciplinary research applied to agriculturally important problems might foster even greater returns. Opportunities await the readers of the Proceedings well beyond those persons trained in the Agricultural and Applied Biological Sciences.