Land Grant Research Modernization
Tim Hammerich
News Reporter
President Trump’s Working Families Tax Cuts provided $125 million annually for the Research Facilities Act program to modernize agricultural research facilities across the country. USDA Research, Education, and Economics Under Secretary Scott Hutchins explains how these funds might assist land grant universities.
Hutchins… “ One might imagine that if you think about the kinds of activities that are really very modern and present today in agricultural science and technology, you might see specifically in the area of digital ag or AI, you might see a lot of activity, for example, and I know a lot of universities have invested in phenotyping facilities to be able to quickly measure and understand what different stressors have, for example, on crops. You can imagine how several would be looking at how they can use the most modern tools for gene editing in both plants and animals. So you can kind of look at the landscape of what's happening in agricultural science today and begin to imagine how many of these universities would want to be part of that. In order to do that, they would need to either renovate or develop or plan for different kinds of facilities.
The USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) will administer this competitive funding opportunity, and the funding will support renovation, expansion, and construction projects.
