Dear Colleagues,

At this week's Contracts and Grants PI Training webinar on proposal development, we commented on the importance of reviewing a funder's mission, vision, and strategic goals as a key step in the process.

Secretary Perdue has announced USDA's new Agriculture Innovation Agenda, a department-wide initiative to align resources, programs, and research to position American agriculture to better meet future global demands. Specifically, USDA will stimulate innovation so that American agriculture can achieve the goal of increasing production by 40 percent while cutting the environmental footprint of U.S. agriculture in half by 2050.

The first component of the Ag Innovation Agenda is to develop a U.S. ag-innovation strategy that aligns and synchronizes public and private sector research. The second component is to align the work of our customer-facing agencies and integrate innovative technologies and practices into USDA programs. The third component is to conduct a review of USDA productivity and conservation data. USDA already closely tracks data on yield, but on the environmental side, there's some catching up to do. Finally, USDA has set benchmarks to hold us accountable. These targets will help measure progress toward meeting the food, fiber, fuel, feed, and climate demands of the future. Some of the benchmarks include:

• Food Loss and Waste: Advance our work toward the United States' goal to reduce food loss and waste by 50 percent in the United States by the year 2030.
• Carbon Sequestration and Greenhouse Gas: Enhance carbon sequestration through soil health and forestry, leverage the agricultural sector's renewable energy benefits for the economy, and capitalize on innovative technologies and practices to achieve net reduction of the agricultural sector's current carbon footprint by 2050 without regulatory overreach.
• Water Quality: Reduce nutrient loss by 30 percent nationally by 2050.
• Renewable Energy: We can increase the production of renewable energy feedstocks and set a goal to increase biofuel production efficiency and competitiveness to achieve market-driven blend rates of 15% of transportation fuels in 2030 and 30% of transportation fuels by 2050.

Several competitive grant programs contribute to America's agricultural research and innovation, including Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) and the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant program.

To learn more about the new Agriculture Innovation Agenda, please visit the following link: https://www.usda.gov/sites/default/files/documents/agriculture-innovation-agenda-vision-statement.pdf

Additionally, the agency released the USDA Science Blueprint, a publication which will serve as the vision for and continued commitment to scientific research.  The document serves as a five-year research plan, and provides a foundation for focused leadership and direction in advancing USDA's scientific mission through 2025. It lays out five overarching themes for research, education, and economics, each with established objectives, strategies, and evidence-building measures.

The five Program Themes include:

•           Sustainable Ag Intensification,

•           Ag Climate Adaptation,

•           Food and Nutrition Translation,

•           Value-Added Innovations, and

•           Ag Science Policy Leadership.

Please review a summary of USDA Science Blueprint theme objectives, strategies, and evidence-building measures at the following link: https://www.usda.gov/sites/default/files/documents/usda-science-blueprint.pdf

The USDA Science Blueprint includes the four REE mission area agencies — the Agricultural Research Service (ARS), the Economic Research Service (ERS), the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS), and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) — along with the Office of the Chief Scientist (OCS) and the science arms of the U.S. Forest Service (FS), Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), Food and Nutrition Service (FNS), and the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS).

Thank you.

Kathleen Nolan, Director, ANR Office of Contracts & Grants (OCG)