Inflation Reduction Act won't help agricultural R&D funding shortage

Inflation Reduction Act won't help agricultural R&D funding shortage

Tim Hammerich
Tim Hammerich
News Reporter
This is Tim Hammerich of the Ag Information Network with your Farm of the Future Report.

Yesterday we reported on the public investment into agricultural research and development which has been declining over the past 20+ years. But didn’t the recent Inflation Reduction Act include a lot of money for agriculture? It did, says The Breakthrough Institute’s Alex Smith, but it won’t move the needle on ag R&D.

Smith… “The original Build Back Better bill had a ton of money for Ag R&D. There's a lot of stuff earmarked in there for really, I think, important technologies. Things like methane reducing technologies for beef, for example. But the IRA I think maybe had like $50 million in total for ag R&D, and it wasn't through the main channels that you would expect. Most of the money in IRA for agriculture is for like climate-smart agriculture through conservation practices. So it's just funding the adoption of existing technologies and practices. Some of those technologies and practices, things that may improve carbon sequestration, they're not really climate solutions. And in some ways, they're more like ways to sort of sell carbon credits to people. So there's a lot of stuff in there that looks good and I think there's a lot of benefit for farmers and producers, but it doesn't really do what I think it should do in terms of increasing agriculture R&D.

Smith said that China has surpassed the U.S. when it comes to public investments into agricultural research and development.

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