Dr. John Holdren: Let me apologize for the last-minute time change which
I think cost us some audience.
The First Lady needed the room for an event.
And what the President and First Lady need has a certain priority
around here for reasons that we all understand.
So we did, we did have to move it, and sorry
for the inconvenience.
But thanks to those of you who were able to make
it nonetheless.
We really do appreciate it.
Before I really get going, I want to recognize a couple
of folks who are very important in our agricultural
research establishment.
Dr. Sonny Ramaswamy, the Director of the National
Institute of Food and Agriculture is here down
in the first -- second row.
And Dr. Ann Bartuska, who is the Deputy Under Secretary of
Agriculture for Research, Education and Economics.
Her boss, the Under Secretary for all of those things,
Dr. Cathy Woteki, will be introduced and heard from later.
And her bio is in the materials that people got coming in.
And we are sorry to be missing Deputy Secretary Kathleen
Merrigan but we lost her in the switch.
But let me, on behalf of the President's Council of Advisors
on Science and Technology, affectionately known as PCAST,
which I have the honor of co-chairing, welcome all of
you to this release of PCAST's latest report,
our report on Enhancing U.S. Agricultural Preparedness.
Separately, and in my capacity as the President's Science and
Technology Advisor, but more importantly on behalf of the
President, I really want to thank PCAST and in particular
the members of the PCAST Working Group on Agricultural
Preparedness which did so much good work on this report.
I think it's really an outstanding job.
Of course, you might think I have to say that.
But this is really an outstanding, an outstanding job.
And I think you'll agree on reading it, as I hope everyone
will, every page, every word, it brings into focus a number
of issues that while widely underappreciated in the larger
science and technology community, are in fact
extremely important, not only for our agricultural research
enterprise, but for our research enterprise and
our economy more broadly.
I say underappreciated because unlike the situation a couple of
generations ago, most people in the country today, and I think,
I'm afraid to say, most scientists and engineers,
are not especially attuned to agricultural issues and perhaps
are even less attuned to the enormous importance that
research and development in the agricultural sciences play in
underpinning our continuing agricultural productivity and
in a very real sense our security and our prosperity.
But I think it only takes a few moments of contemplation and in
a sense looking at the data, which I always recommend,
to recognize how essential the country's agricultural
enterprise is.
The economic dimension is a big part of that appreciation,
of course.
As the PCAST report notes, exports of agricultural products
produced a $34 billion trade surplus in 2010, a $37 billion
trade surplus in 2011.
And while we are no longer primarily a nation of farmers,
as we once were, the agricultural sector
is still responsible for 1 in 12 American jobs.
But beyond its economic impact, the U.S. agricultural
sector provides a foundation for world food stability and
security, supplying most of the food aid to
developing nations around the world.
And, of course, there can be no political stability
without food security.
At the foundation of this remarkable agricultural
enterprise is a world of research and development that
in this country, at least, dates back to our founding fathers.
Our founding fathers in this country were deeply committed
to agricultural science.
And over the decades and centuries the R&D component
of our agricultural enterprise has made the U.S. farmer among
the most efficient in the world.
Since the 1930s, just to give a few examples, yields of staple
crops such as soy beans have more than tripled.
Corn yields have increased five-fold.
And these successes stem directly from the investments we
made in basic and applied plant, animal and agricultural research
across the federal agencies.
And of course the translation and implementation of that
research by land grant universities and by the
private sector.
I'm going to leave it to my colleagues from the U.S.
Department of Agriculture and to study co-leader Dr. Dan Schrag
of PCAST to go into the details with you.
But there is one take-home message that I want to leave
you with from this report.
And that message is, really, how important it is that this
remarkable history of improvements in agriculture
through research and development must continue going forward.
We cannot rest on our laurels.
As the report documents, we face some stiff challenges
in the decades ahead to our agricultural system.
I won't talk about those.
I will let others.
But I will simply say that happily they are not
insurmountable challenges.
And I want to point out one very important thing in particular,
especially in these times, which is that PCAST doesn't
simply look to Congress and say provide more money.
That's important.
We do call for more financial support in some areas.
But the report also calls for important structural changes
in how the Department of Agriculture and the federal
government support agricultural research.
And along with a rebalancing of the agricultural research
portfolio, it can go along way toward ensuring that America
continues to be the world leader in agricultural production and
preparedness for many decades to come.
So I commend to all of you what I think is a very rational and
implementable approach to advancing U.S. agricultural
productivity, stability, sustainability and more.
As you can see from your agendas, at this point I was
supposed to introduce Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan,
but I can't, because she's, alas, not here.
But I'm at this point going to pass the baton to PCAST's
own Dan Schrag.
Dan is a Professor in the Department of Earth and
Planetary Sciences and in the School of Engineering and
Applied Sciences of Harvard.
And he is the Director of the Harvard Center for the
Environment as well as a very productive member of PCAST and
the co-leader of this study.
And he will be followed by USDA Chief Scientist and Under
Secretary for Research, Education and Economics,
Dr. Cathy Woteki, who may say a little bit what Kathleen
Merrigan would have said as well as offering her own, her own
thoughts on this report.
So at this point, Dan, it is all yours.
(applause)
Dan Schrag: Thanks to John Holdren.
I've got to say I don't know how previous PCASTs worked, but this
PCAST is a highly-collaborative, engaged group of individuals.
And I thank John Holdren for his leadership, really, in
stewarding this report all the way through to the finish.
He has really supported this effort from the beginning.
And it's a very important reason of why we are here today.
I want to start out just thanking somebody who is
also not here.
Unfortunately this was scheduled when my co-chair of this working
group, Barbara Schaal, couldn't be here.
As many of you know, Barbara is a plant biologist at Washington
University in St. Louis, the Vice President of the National
Academy of Sciences and an incredibly forceful and
articulate spokesperson within PCAST championing this report
from the very beginning.
And so, really, she has been my partner and guide throughout
this process.
And I am really sorry she's not here.
But we really have to acknowledge it because this,
this report really started from her and is really her vision,
and we see her wisdom throughout this report.
So thank you to Barbara.
There were two other PCAST members who contributed
substantially to the working group, Rosena Birbaum and
Mark Gorenberg.
They also, their wisdom was very influential in this, in getting
us this study.
And I want to make clear to all of you that this was a
highly-collaborative group with a working group of people both
from academia, from government service and from industry.
And I just want to quickly name the working group.
Sharon Clay, Jeff Dangl, David Fishof, Mollie John, Don Latham,
Frank Mitloehner, Tom Sinclair, who is with us today,
and Chris Somerville.
In addition, the working group worked with, through a series of
workshops, people from across the agricultural sector, from
industry, from government, from, you know, former leadership
of the Department of Agriculture, and, of course,
academics as well.
And all of those, all of that input was extremely important.
Finally, two PCAST staff members, Amber Hartman Scholz
and Mary Maxon were both incredibly important in making
this happen not just logistically but actually
in the recommendations and structure of the report.
They were really partners in all of this.
So thank you to Mary and Amber, you guys were heros.
So one final thank you, really, is to the leadership
of the USDA.
This was a collaborative report, not in the sense that they
actually wrote it or told us what to say, but ultimately
PCAST's Report to the President has to be acted on by the
Department of Agriculture to a large extent.
And, really, the wisdom and advice and engagement of Under
Secretary Woteki, who we will hear from in a minute, also
Roger Beachy and then later on more recently Sonny Ramaswamy,
was absolutely critical in actually getting the result that
we have which we think is both important but also actionable
and we hope will be effective.
And so thank you to both of you but we will hear
from Cathy in a second.
We also benefited from data from science and technology.
PCAST is a group of scientists and technologists and so as a
result the Economic Research Service and the Science and
Technology Policy Institute, as well as NSF, provided data
for this report that was critical to reaching the
conclusions that we did.
So we thank their support as well. Okay.
So let's do a very brief overview of this report.
I'm not going to spend a long time on it.
You have the executive summary.
Hopefully many of you have actually read the report by now.
I can tell you as somebody who has slaved
over every sentence --
(laughter)
-- in the report.
That it's actually incredibly well written.
(laughter)
It actually makes wonderful Christmas gifts --
(laughter)
-- so you might think about that.
It's a wonderful report.
But in all seriousness, I think it's important for
me to just briefly give you a sense of how we got to where
this report ended up.
We really started asking what are the challenges.
What are the issues in front of us that are a priority for
agriculture in the decades ahead.
We were all aware of how important agriculture has
been in this country's history.
It was to me a little ironic that we were doing this report
in the 150th year after the Morrill Act and how important
that is not just to agriculture and the research development of
the United States but also to the democratization of education
in the United States.
Really, it was the land grant institutions that gave access
to education and all that comes with that across the nation,
to parts of the nation that really didn't have access before.
So this was an incredible important part of our history.
And so in thinking about its role going forward,
this was a very important time.
And as John Holdren mentioned, agriculture is incredibly
important to our economy.
It's incredibly important to our jobs in our economy.
And also to the world in terms of food security and stability.
What's interesting to us is that agriculture perhaps has become a
victim of its own success.
It has been, the improvements in agriculture in yield have
been so phenomenal that actually there has been an assumption
almost that this state could continue.
That essentially with actually no more investment in research
that agriculture would continue to flourish.
And in some ways that has actually happened partly
because of the investment in the private sector.
So the private sector's investment in agricultural
research is substantial, and very healthy and very vibrant.
And at the same time, over the last three decades,
federal funding for agricultural research has been roughly flat.
This is at a time when science budgets in other areas of
science around the country have grown by a huge amount.
So this is an interesting backdrop for this.
And, really, one of the immediate questions in front
of us was the balance between private and public and the
overlap between private and public funding for research.
What was clear to us after discussions with people from
across the spectrum in the agricultural research community
was that actually there were private and public sector needs
that were actually quite different.
That there were a number of emerging challenges for
agriculture that required a research investment that were
really in the public domain that the private sector was not going
to do on its own.
And that in fact there were some important areas that either just
required partnership with the private sector or really
required a sole public investment.
And that was something that came out very clearly.
I can talk about, briefly about what some of these
challenges are.
Clearly managing new pests and pathogens, invasive plants and
other organisms, incredibly important for the future.
We have sort of gotten lulled into a since of security by some
of the advances but in fact things like wheat rust and other
things are emerging once again as a danger to our agricultural
system and it's very important to continue efforts on that.
Water.
Obviously water in all of its components,
both in quantity and quality.
This summer's drought and, really, the summer before
in Texas, are extreme examples of this, but this is going to be
a continuing challenge going forward.
And so we have to think again about water efficiency and all
that goes along with water use and its relationship to plants,
animals and the entire agricultural activity.
We also identified the environmental footprint
of agriculture.
Things from greenhouse gases to also to fertilizer runoff
and pollution in streams and waterways.
Soil quality.
Again, a lot of this is agricultural practice.
A variety of good science and engineering that is involved.
And this is an important area of investment as well.
Climate change.
I think, more and more the climate science community, and
I'm a member of that community, recognizes that extreme events
and heatwaves are more and more connected to the rising
greenhouse gases that we're continuing.
And this will also affect pests and pathogens.
Although, really, the impact of climate change on agriculture
and pests is sort of a new field in some ways.
It's really, some of the most important work is less than a
decade old and so there is a lot of new people coming
into this field.
And it's discovering a lot of room.
For example, recently there was just a paper that has come out
on the role of adaptation and how farmers historically have
adapted to the change that we have already experienced.
Really, one of the first studies that has analyzed this carefully
and that's kind of amazing.
There's a lot more good work that needs to be done.
At the same time we're dealing with climate change, there is
the challenge of bionergy.
And really bionergy is just one component of a broader
bioeconomy that we have talked about.
And so this is an additional demand for agriculture at a time
when agriculture is already asked to do quite a lot.
And we can anticipate partly in response to climate concerns but
also in response to other concerns about security and
other energy issues that we will expect greater demands on the
agricultural community for producing fuel as well and
that is going to be a major challenge.
And finally the broader challenge of global
food security.
The truth is we feed the world.
We are the major supplier of food aid in the world, and we
have to maintain that ability partly for our own national
security because stability in other parts of the world
actually matters to us.
So I think we can step back and say each of these challenges by
themselves is actually a difficult one.
Each of them involves multiple disciplines.
Each of them involves a variety of complex basic science and
applied science issues.
And they're not going to be solved.
We're not going to come up with, you know, solutions to any of
these next year.
These are going to be continuing challenges.
Many of them the agricultural community has worked on for a
long time.
Some of them are emerging in the agricultural community.
But this is going to be a sustained effort
over many decades.
And that is really the pattern that we have to step up.
But the magnitude of these problems really means that
we need to focus the attention on this area.
So in the report we look at the research enterprise and ask the
question are we really prepared for this?
I don't want to go through all of the details of our findings.
Let me just say very simply, really, from these challenges,
we conclude that in fact we are not prepared to meet all
of these in the current system.
There are many things in the current agricultural research
system that we should be very proud of.
But one of the challenges is that as the funding has remained
flat, as the private sector has invested so much effort, there
is currently a lot of overlap.
A lot of overlap between the private research and
publicly-funded research.
Now, some of that overlap is a good thing.
Clearly you don't want, you know, complete separation
of the activities.
There is a training important component.
There is also a lot of knowledge transfer between the two.
But our working group felt that the overlap was a little bit too
much and that there actually were some of these challenges
that weren't getting enough attention from the public
funding that were clearly in the public domain, and that
the private sector wasn't going to do enough.
So there is an opportunity for rebalancing here.
The second important point is that the allocation of research
support is currently dominated by noncompetitive processes.
And in every other sector of scientific research, they tend
to have a much higher fraction of competitive awards and as a
result there was a PCAST concern that this might
actually hinder innovation.
So PCAST recognizes the incredible importance of
the agricultural research enterprise to the country.
So we recommend actually a substantial new investment
in agricultural research.
Substantial new investment that you can think of is really
reinvigoration of agricultural research in all areas, both in
research and training of the workforce and education.
And also in the infrastructure that is required to get it done.
We essentially go through a variety of details in this.
We recommend a basic research component really funded through
the National Science Foundation.
NSF plays an incredibly important role in basic
science research.
And in some ways they have, for a variety of reasons, their
attention to basic research and supportive agricultural
has waned a little bit.
We want to invigorate that and reestablish that.
So we recommend a new allocation of money for that effort.
We also recommend substantial additional competitive funding
to grow the competitive programs within the U.S.
Department of Agriculture.
We also have some important areas where we felt that
actually synergy between the private sector and the public
sector was incredibly important.
And we looked at the Department of Energy and their very
successful hubs and energy frontier research centers and
also some of the efforts on biofuels, the U.S., the DOE
centers, but also the BP Center at Berkeley that
is a public/private partnership with a substantial focus of
funding on a challenge.
And we thought that this actually might be an incredibly
important mechanism for the USDA as well to actually set up a
series of public/private partnerships around some
of these grand challenges.
Letting the different groups actually define what the scope
of that challenge was, but bringing partners from the
agricultural research service, from academia and from the
private sector together in a consortia that, in a series of
consortia that would actually work on a variety
of these challenges.
We think that is an experiment well worth doing.
Separate from the research investments themselves,
one of the recurring themes that we heard both from academia and
from industry was the need for training new students.
Agriculture used to attract the best and the brightest
and there's a concern that the students coming into graduate
programs, that are still wonderful students across this
country, but that we were worried that we were not
necessarily drawing and attracting the very best
students from the sciences.
Agricultural -- agriculture, these challenges of agriculture
are so exciting, they are so important scientifically,
that we should by attracting -- we should be competing with
biochemistry, with molecular biology, with earth sciences,
with engineering, with any other science program in the country.
And so PCAST recommends an investment in expanding and
broadening the fellowship program at the USDA.
Other science agencies, NSF, NIH and others, NASA, et cetera,
have very vibrant graduate and post doc fellowship programs
that attract, that will really help the community attract the
very best and the brightest.
We feel an investment in graduate fellowships and
post doctoral fellowships will really, in some ways, create
this innovation ecosystem and increase these sort of level of
enthusiasm and energy within the agricultural field.
And then finally, in addition to a variety of other things I
am not going to mention here for lack of time, we recognize that
infrastructure is a big challenge.
One of the problems is that, you know, the original vision
for agriculture was a distributed system where
there was lots and lots of institutions doing agricultural
research at a very local scale.
The problem is that as science has advanced, we have large
facilities that can't be duplicated at every
single institution.
We just can't afford that kind of level of investment.
So there needs to be a sort of overall plan for investment
in infrastructure.
We need a new investment and new money in infrastructure,
but we have to be competitive about it so that we actually
fund key institutions to provide centers and then give access to
other institutions to those facilities.
And I think Under Secretary Woteki has already worked
towards this but this is something that clearly needs
more attention as well.
So with that, we'll have time later on to ask specific
questions and we'll have time for the panel as well,
but let's move on and hear from Under Secretary Woteki
and get her thoughts and then we'll move on to the panel.
So let me just briefly introduce Cathy.
She is, as John said, the Chief Scientist at the USDA and the
Under Secretary for Research, Education and Economics.
She oversees the USDA R&D components and institutes
including NIFA and the Agricultural Research Service,
the Economic Research Service and the National Agricultural
Statistic Service.
She has, over the years, worn many hats from industry to
government and academia.
And I can just tell you that working with her has just been a
joy and a privilege, because she really has laid out some of the
challenges, but also given us the space to really come to
these conclusions, bringing the community along, and so I really
appreciate her efforts on this.
Thank you, Cathy.
(applause)
Dr. Catherine Woteki: Well, thank you, very much, Dr. Schrag.
And good afternoon, everyone.
Both Secretary Vilsack and Deputy Secretary Merrigan, have
had an enormous interest in this project right from the beginning
when the first question arose, you know, how well prepared
are we to meet these agricultural challenges?
And really, what is the role of our science agencies in
addressing these challenges?
And both of them wanted to be here this afternoon.
We thought we were going to have Deputy Secretary Merrigan
provide her view and comments on the report, its findings and its
recommendations, but sadly with the last-minute time change she
wasn't able to be here.
We do have with us, though, some additional very important people
from the department that I wanted to recognize.
In addition to Dr. Ramaswamy, the Director of our extramural
program, the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, we also
have present Dr. Ed Knipling, who is the Administrator of the
Agricultural Research Service.
And Dr. Cynthia Clark, the Administrator of the National
Agricultural Statistics Service.
And we have several members of the Economic Research Service
who played an important role, as Dr. Schrag said, in providing
some analysis and data in response to the needs of
the committee that put together this report.
Dr. Mary Bowman, the Administrator of ERS,
has been in Rome this week at a very important conference
convened by the United Nations that's examining how do we
improve worldwide our agricultural statistics.
And Dr. Clark has also, with Dr. Bowman, been playing very
much a leadership role in these UN activities
to improve agricultural statistics worldwide.
We look at these activities of ERS and NASS as being an
essential part of our research infrastructure as well.
So we really regret the change in timing.
We're glad that everybody has been able to join us in person
or by video.
And the fact that this distinguished and diverse group
of scientists in the President's Council of Advisors on Science
and Technology has focused its time and efforts on examining
the future of agricultural research and our nation's
preparedness to meet the food, fiber and bioenergy needs of the
next decades, is very heartening to us who look at agriculture as
being a key part of our nation's critical
infrastructure and economy.
In fact, if you look back over the 150 years that we have had
a Department of Agriculture, science has been part of it
from the very beginning.
And that work has enabled America's food security, as
Dr. Schrag has already pointed out, and it's also laid the
groundwork for a lot of breakthroughs in plant and
animal physiology, biochemistry, genetics, human nutrition, food
science, food safety, as well in fields that are further afield:
Chemistry, medicine, environmental science.
And agriculture actually was the birthplace of the whole field of
statistics to begin with.
So in addition, the Department of Agriculture is also the place
where other federal agencies were born.
The Food and Drug Administration grew out of programs in the
Department of Agriculture.
As did parts of the Environmental Protection Agency.
But too often we fail to tell our own story.
So we thank you, very much, PCAST, for helping
us to do that.
I specifically want to thank Dr. Holdren, the co-chairs of
this study.
You have heard from Dr. Schrag.
Also Dr. Barbara Schaal for their leadership.
And specifically also to Dr. Amber Hartman Scholz of the
PCATS staff for the work, Amber, that you've done in coordinating
the report.
And also in helping to get us all here today this afternoon.
It seems fortuitous to me that this report is the first to be
issued after the report that PCAST issued last Friday.
Last week's study was of the future of the U.S.
research enterprise broadly writ.
And that report reaffirmed President Obama's goal that
U.S. total R&D expenditures reached a level of about 3%
of our gross domestic product.
So our competitiveness definitely depends on that.
And I was kind of intrigued by that number.
So I asked the Economic Research Service to give me an estimate
of the expenditures on public and private agricultural
research as a percentage of agriculture GDP, and they tell
me that that number is 1.9%.
So both public and private sectors have a ways to go to
meet this goal for agriculture, if you look at the 3% goal as
applying across different sectors of the economy.
And I think it also underscores your overall recommendation that
the U.S. increase its investment in agricultural research.
The recommendations that PCAST makes in the report that it's
releasing today provide an excellent opportunity to launch
some important initiatives, even in the midst of what
is a somewhat bleak outlook with respect to appropriations.
As it points out, the public investment in agricultural
research should focus around the grant challenges posed by
emerging threats such as new pests and pathogens, limited
water availability, impacts of agriculture on human and
environmental health, and adaptation to a
changing climate.
By recommending increased partnerships and collaborations
beyond what we're already doing, we can move forward on some
recommendations within our current appropriations.
So work can also begin on the new innovation ecosystem that's
recommended leveraging the best from our current infrastructure.
On examination of the report, I want to highlight a few of the
areas which I believe that we can begin working to
strengthen our work.
The first is in the rebalancing of the portfolio.
The report recommends a gradual rebalancing of the agricultural
portfolio away from intramural and formula and capacity funding
and toward a more competitive environment.
The 2008 farm bill that authorized our programs and
created the National Institute of Food and Agriculture and its
competitive grants program, the Agriculture and Food Research
Initiative, what we call AFRI, laid an important foundation
for this rebalancing.
And I think this recommendation actually reaffirms the budget
strategy that's informed the President's budget requests
for AFRI over this last several years.
So as we rebalance, we need to maintain also a strong
intramural program to fulfill what are the necessary and
uniquely governmental responsibilities, such as
providing the evidence base for regulatory action, performing
the sensitive research that protects our animal and plant
resources, responding to accidental and deliberate
contamination of our food and water supplies, preserving
genetic collections and providing infrastructure
for long-term fundamental agroecosystem science for
agricultural statistics, and also in the areas of economics.
Another recommendation is to conduct a review of regulatory
policy for agriculture.
And while the agencies in my mission area are not in the
regulatory realm, they often perform the research that
regulators need for decision making.
And we're ready to assist with a review of federal regulatory
policy for agriculture.
And we are leading for the department its efforts to
implement the President's memorandum on technology
transfer and preparing our first annual report on that effort.
PCAST recommends that six multidisciplinary innovation
institutes be created and focused on the
emerging challenges.
We have some models that we've been experimenting with over the
last couple of years in AFRI.
The coordinated agriculture program grants have provided
grants to challenge the scientific community to
build consortia aimed at solving critical problems.
And so far, this cap approach has funded some very innovative
work in genetics and genomics as it relates to legumes, wheat,
barley and rice, as well as bioenergy feedstock development,
new approaches to preventing obesity in the human population,
and climate mitigation.
Today with the U.S. Agency for International Development,
we're awarding five grants totaling over $5 million
for research to improve the production of the common bean.
And this is one of the world's most vital food crops.
The projects under the President's Feed the Future
Initiative will address production challenges faced
by small holder producers.
This year, the Agricultural Research Service launched what
we're calling Long-Term Agroecosystem Research Network
or LTAR, that links 10 of the intramural laboratories and 60
universities on a regional basis to focus on water, soil and
other environmental studies important to sustainable
intensification of agricultural production.
And as we incorporate the concepts of one health into
our program, the concept of one health unifies plant,
animal and human health and recognizes that their interests
are really inextricably linked, both here in the United States
domestically, as well as globally.
So we'll be looking to the models that PCAST has pointed us
to in the report, as well as some of these experiments we've
been doing ourselves as we consider how to implement this
recommendation on new centers of excellence for innovation.
I'm really pleased that the report pays attention to a
number of very important infrastructure issues and human
capital issues that are critical for our country's future.
The report acknowledges the aging and increasingly obsolete
infrastructure for agriculture research.
And Congress also took notice of this this past year and
asked the Agricultural Research Service to prepare
a capital investment plan for its facilities across
the United States.
This plan was delivered to Congress earlier this year.
The land grant university system is also in much the
same situation as it relates to agricultural
research facilities.
And there is no currently funded authority for the department to
competitively fund new research facilities and to renovate or
replace aging infrastructure at our largest agricultural
research institutions.
So work on this issue has to be a priority and we really have to
be focusing on our infrastructure needs.
I might just add a footnote there that we do have the
authority for doing this, but it simply has not been
funded since 1987.
The one exception to that are the historically black colleges
that we call the colleges of 1890, for which there's about
a $20 million competitive program currently within
the NIFA portfolio.
Working to ensure a well-educated agricultural
science work force is critical for the success of rural
America, but also for one of our largest industries here in the
United States, and that's food and agriculture.
We look forward to working with the National Science Foundation
to expand competitive fellowship programs that
both NSF and NIFA support.
We work already with NSF on a broad range of research topics
in the genetics and genomics area, biodiversity, robotics,
as well as in the area of climate change.
And I've spoken with my colleague, Dr. Subra Suresh,
as has Dr. Ramaswamy, about identifying further areas in
which we can collaborate.
Finally, the report recommends that a science advisory
committee be formed to advise the Undersecretary for Research,
Education and Economics.
At USDA, we've got a lot of advisory committees, but we
don't have one that does this.
We do have a stakeholder committee, the NAREE board that
provides advice to the Secretary and to me about our research
programs, education, economics, extension.
They've even delved into the statistics programs recently.
But it would be most useful to have a really cutting edge
science advisory group that would help us in further
sharpening our focus on science.
I hope that we'll be able to form such a group expeditiously
once we get reauthorization of our programs in the Agriculture
Reform, Food and Jobs Act.
And I look forward to continued collaboration with members of
PCAST, with our colleagues in other government agencies,
with scientists in public and private universities and in
the private sector.
My thanks to all of you in PCAST for the work that you put into
this report and to the many people that you consulted,
because I know there were many of them.
With adequate and well-considered investment,
we'll continue to push the frontiers of knowledge and
maintain what really has been stunning momentum for
agriculture's growth.
So thank you all very much.
(applause)
Daniel Schrag: Going to ask the panel to come up right now.
We'll get Cathy back up here in a little while to be part
of the question and answer.
Wonderful.
So thanks to all of you for joining me here today.
Let me just briefly introduce you.
You have their bios, so I don't need to spend a lot
of time on this.
To my left here, Ellen Bergfeld is the CEO of three scientific
societies in agriculture: The American Society of Agronomy,
Crop Science Society of America, and the Soil Science Society of
America, representing about 30,000 scientists
and related professionals.
Tom Sinclair in the middle was one of our working group members
as part of this PCAST process.
Tom is a crop -- is a plant physiologist and
agricultural scientist.
He's worked in the agriculture research service at the
University of Florida and most recently at
North Carolina State University.
And unfortunately, Norm Scott, who is the Chairman of the
National Research Council's Board on Agriculture and
Natural Resources, or BANR, couldn't be here today.
He had a family issue.
But on his behalf, we're very happy to have Robin Schoen.
Thank you, Robin, for coming.
Robin is the Director of BANR, and she has a long history in
science policy working on a full range of issues, but very much
agriculture has been a big focus for her.
So thank you, Robin.
So let's actually start off with you, Robin.
So Robin, you know, the PCAST report really benefited
enormously from previous work by the NRC, and there -- although
we didn't just take your report as a starting point,
we actually ended up in many of the same places.
And do you want to reflect a little bit on your perception
having worked on that BANR report on the recommendations
here and how they resonate?
Robin Schoen: Sure.
Well, I didn't work on these reports, because they were --
several reports were produced over many decades, actually,
looking at agricultural research and recommending that there be
more competitive research grants given.
And I think the reason that the NRC panels over the years
thought that greater attention to competitive grants was
important was in part not because you couldn't make
advances or innovation in other ways, after all, as you noted in
your opening remarks, we've done remarkable things in
agriculture with only a small amount of money going
to competitive grants.
But that they fulfilled sort of a balance and a portfolio
for the whole approach to agricultural research.
And ultimately, I think what competitive research does is
press people for rigor and moves the scientific enterprise
forward, because you have to perform or you
don't get another grant.
You produce information that you publish and other people
can build on it.
Your work is examined by peers.
I mean, obviously there's been criticisms of the peer review
process within the academy itself.
High risk research doesn't necessarily always get funded.
Multidisciplinary research is hard to review, if you only have
a review panel that's narrowly focused.
But I think on balance it's felt that if you really want to be
considered a serious, scientific organization, you've got to have
the rigor that competitive grants provide.
Daniel Schrag: That's great.
And Tom, you know, in our working group discussions, you
were a constant reminder to us of how important the training
was and the training role of agriculture, how important it
was to actually find the best students, attract them, and
actually give them a solid foundation from which to take
this research enterprise forward in the future.
The competitive grants program, not just the fellowships, but
also this rebalancing actually affects the education
environment, as well.
Do you want to comment on that?
Tom Sinclair: Let me comment first, let me say, I was on this
panel pretty well all through the gestation, and I want to
thank Dan and Barbara for their leadership in this effort.
I was probably the dirt-on-boots agronomist on this panel and I
was always coming up with things that were kind of new to them,
I think, or new to others.
And fortunately, I'm glad some of these things showed up,
and I guess that's why I respect our leadership
because they didn't automatically discard
all these things.
Daniel Schrag: I've got to say, there's no question Tom was the
dirt-on-boots agronomist.
We did actually have somebody, Don Latham, who would
occasionally participate in our conference calls from his
tractor on the farm.
So we actually had some real farm perspective, as well.
But yeah, great.
Tom Sinclair: Let me get to the education issue.
I don't think many recognize how series a crisis we are in
our education level.
The number of crop scientists in the U.S.
is now less than half of what it was 20 years ago.
That is, we have that many fewer scientists doing -- meeting
these more severe challenges.
And it's worse than that, because I think the number
of scientists in the private sector hasn't decreased.
So virtually all this decrease has been in the public sector.
There are not that many plant scientists when you look around.
And the future is really dismal in how we're going to do that,
and we need this infusion of funding to bring in people that
we can excite about the agriculture and excite
them across the spectrum of disciplines in agriculture.
We've got many things, many things they do and
I hope we can make the spectrum pretty broad.
And we need to excite American people into this.
It's pretty rare that you can go into graduate school now and
find any U.S. citizens.
And that is not wholly bad, but it would be nice to have
some home-grown scientists who understand how this economy
works and how important food and agriculture is to the U.S.
So I'm very excited about this recommendation that we really
innovate things to support education for future scientists.
Daniel Schrag: Thanks, Tom.
And Ellen, let's turn to you.
So you represent, as I said, a large number of
agricultural scientists.
What is their perspective on this in terms of the grant
challenges and the real issues they're facing both in their
laboratories and on their farms?
Ellen Bergfield: Absolutely.
I think this is -- the report is coming out at
a very critical time.
At the same time, within even the report as it's written,
it indicates that there have been numerous requests for
competitive funds dating back to the early 1970s,
and we're not quite there yet.
So it's a chronic issue.
We've not kept up with funding.
The investments, as Dr. Woteki has indicated, have not been
made in the infrastructure.
We've got a lot of individuals who are trying to do really good
work and they're spending an increasing amount of their
time writing grants that are not successfully awarded.
And they're really wanting to do great work and are not able
to because they're hindered by the lack of resources.
So I think that that, as well as the state pressure,
the lack of funding from the state side of things,
in addition to the federal side, they're looking at new ways to
innovate, to work with private industry and so forth,
but they're really trying to get out there and do better things.
As Tom has indicated, as well, they're having a harder and
harder time attracting students, not only at the graduate level
and the postgraduate, but trying to get them through the
pipeline, attracting them into the pipeline, in K through 12
side of things, as well.
So it's throughout the whole system that we're hearing the
challenges and what we feel just reading through the report,
it really addresses much of that need.
Probably the biggest challenge, though, that we see collectively
is how do we make this attractive, how do we sell
this to the broad general public and to our members of Congress
that this is a critical need and we've not made
the investments and we've got to do so for the future.
Daniel Schrag: You know, from my perspective, as somebody --
as a scientist who's a little further away from agricultural
research, it's amazing to me how little exposure the rest of the
scientific community has to agricultural research questions.
One of the things we noted in the report is that there's been
over the last couple of decades a phenomenal federal investment
in scientific research in biology, in physical sciences,
really an explosion in the life sciences, a really and truly
amazing revolution.
And yet, if we look at where agricultural research goes on,
it is largely separate from other areas of the
natural sciences.
One of the things we commented on in this report was that in
some ways there's an opportunity to take advantage of these large
federal investments through NIH and through NSF and other areas
of science and actually transfer some of that
progress into agriculture.
Now, some of that's happened.
And Tom, you've been exceptional in actually working across
fields of agriculture, but also into other
areas of natural sciences.
But there are institutional barriers here.
And one of the hopes is that we can actually create a more
engaged agricultural research community that actually has
stronger connections to molecular biology, to physics,
to chemistry, to engineering.
Tom Sinclair: If I can follow up, the big institutional
hindrance is no money.
If you give money, I guarantee you, we will work with anybody.
We're at that stage.
Daniel Schrag: We think there's really an opportunity maybe through
these institutes or possibly just through
competitive grants themselves that this investment will
actually reintegrate institutionally the
agricultural sciences community.
Does that resonate with --
Robin Schoen: Absolutely.
I think if the additional funds for both research and graduate
fellowships were to come to fruition, that would present
a very big opportunity.
But I think, as you've pointed out, it does require an approach
to reintegrating the other sciences.
And that means, I think, that the institutions now that play
a major role have to perhaps rethink or revisualize their
relationship to those other sciences and to think about
the problems in agriculture as system problems, much more
complex, that require other disciplinary involvement.
And I think those -- that kind of outlook is the kind of thing
that gets people from other fields excited to see where
they fit in, how they fit into solving certain problems,
and that's, instead of just, say, the agronomy department
or the animal science department or something very narrow, it's a
more open way of inviting people in to be part of this exciting
world of agriculture that those of us in it, you know,
really know already.
Daniel Schrag: What's clear to me is that agriculture has
great challenges and great questions and so it should
be able to attract fabulous scientists
from across the disciplines.
Robin Schoen: Um-hmm.
Daniel Schrag: So Ellen, just -- we don't have much time left.
We'll get some questions from the audience in a minute.
But any last perspective on implementation of this report
going forward?
Ellen Bergfield: Boy, implementation.
I think getting the word out and what PCAST is able to do, having
this report come from PCAST, I think, certainly is the
first step to elevating the issue to a greater degree.
It's something that I know on behalf of our societies, each
time we're going to the Hill, each time we're going to be
communicating with our members of Congress, we're going to have
it in hand.
We're going to have specific requests based on the report,
and really try to get it out to that group of people.
How we get it out then as well and take it all the way to the
general public, get it out to guidance counselors, for
example, for the K through 12, how do we permeate into the
general population and talk about these issues.
Our grant challenges in a way that invigorates and cause some
curiosity about our sciences.
You know, how can we feed this burgeoning population?
How are we going to do it sustainably so that we're taking
care of our natural resources?
You know, and making those questions stick in the general
population, I think that's going to be our biggest challenge in
terms of garnering support.
Tom Sinclair: Can I add a few words --
Daniel Schrag: Of course.
Tom Sinclair: -- with regard to implementation.
The key of any research activity is having sustained funds.
And while you may not have noticed that there's limited
research money out there, and I think the optimism for having
more has to be severely dampened.
The place where there is money, and there is a growing demand
for people to participate with them, are the private companies.
I've had it expressed to me several times, we need people
to work with us to do some of these fundamental things.
Unfortunately, the companies put most of their money in
one basket.
A lot of them put it in the biotech, and it hasn't really
produced much, except for the two genes that came out about
20 years ago.
So they're in desperate need.
They're going to universities now and saying, what can we do,
how do we get things going?
And I think this is one of the things the report has really put
forward and really probably it helped institutionalize it into
putting together these groups involving hopefully some more
federal funding and the private funding, to bring
together public and private people to work together.
And that's a little different than the
relationship in the past.
In the past, the company said we want you to do this for us and
they would give money to do seed trials or chemical trials.
We need a whole new framework where we're working with them,
a more open atmosphere, a more interactive atmosphere.
And I think this is an opportunity that we can move
forward immediately, no matter what the funding is really at
the federal level necessarily.
Daniel Schrag: Thank you, Tom.
You know, actually, the person who's actually going to help us
actually get this done and make this happen is
Undersecretary Woteki.
So let's actually invite Cathy back up here for a second and
then begin to take some questions from the audience.
But I want to start actually with asking Sonny Ramaswamy for
his perspective, because Sonny is a very important player
moving forward in terms of enacting these recommendations
through NIFA, actually leading this charge.
And so, Sonny, do you want to stand up for a second and give
us a perspective and maybe a question for anybody up here?
Sonny Ramaswamy: All right.
Well, thanks very much, Dan, for inviting me to
share my perspective.
And I really want to appreciate -- convey my sense of
appreciation as well to you and Barbara and of course PCAST in
general, as well, for the incredible amount of work
that you've invested in developing a report,
a very thoughtful report.
And you bring gravitas to the situation as it were, you know.
I mean, when you think about the agricultural enterprise, and it
is one of these things that's "out of sight, out of mind" for
most people in America, and in the world for that matter, but
particularly in this country.
And what you've done in shedding the spotlight on this endeavor
of this -- very important endeavor of putting food
on the table in the context of the population explosion,
in the context of all the other challenges, is a very important
opportunity for us to move forward.
And I thank you very much for doing that.
And indeed, you know, as you said, and as Dr. Woteki said,
as well, I mean, you know, this is 150 years ago that scientific
agriculture was set into motion.
And so for 150 years, that endeavor has had a huge impact
in America and the world.
And I hope this PCAST report is going to set the agenda
for the food and agricultural enterprise for the next many,
many decades to come.
And I thank you for that.
So already I think you know several of us have taken to
heart having had the privilege of interacting with you and the
others on PCAST and having had a chance to read the report,
as well.
We've already incorporated, and Dr. Woteki and I and several of
my colleagues, we've had several conversations about how do we
move forward on some of the suggestions that you've made,
working with the other federal agencies,
as well as private enterprise.
We're in the process of creating what we call as
knowledge partnerships.
And going with this innovation, ecosystem, these partnerships
that are very critical to addressing these challenges.
And we've already had conversations with a number of
the agencies, federal agencies, as well as some of the folks in
private enterprise, as well.
I'm very optimistic that we're going to make some headway in
taking some of the suggestions that you've
made and moving it forward.
Another area that I hope has been part of the conversations
during the farm bill conversations is to create an
enterprise like the Foundation for Agricultural Research, that
is to bring private enterprise funding for food and
agricultural research like we have for NIH, like we have for
FDA and other agencies.
And I hope as we go forward, people will really think about
how can private enterprise come in and invest not just in what's
of interest to them, but from that altruistic perspective of
societal benefit, as well.
And maybe there's some opportunities that the PCAST
report can help Congress consider moving forward
in that area.
So wanted to give that as a sort of a perspective.
And I want to ask you a question, specifically you,
Daniel Schrag.
As Ellen said, we've had a chronic situation of
underinvestment in this unbelievable enterprise
in this world, in America, and the challenges that we address
in the endeavors that we support.
So that being the case, there's always been a chronic
underinvestment, and we've got the report that is now public.
And, as Ellen said, our community that is watching
us across the country will now take this forward,
go to Congress and even within state legislatures to seek the
funding that we need.
Realistically speaking, from your perspective, and tell me
what you're thinking, what was the conversation behind the
doors, as it were, when you have the ear of the gentleman who has
got the ear of the President and as we go forward, the reality of
realizing what has been recommended in the report.
Thanks very much.
Daniel Schrag: Thank you, Sonny.
And I've got to say, on the first comment you made about
the private sector, I think it was amazing to me how the wide
variety of companies who participated in the various
workshops in process, that we led, all said that although,
you know, they weren't willing to fund a lot of the basic
research that wasn't going to lead to any product for them in
some reasonable time, they would be more than willing
to participate in co-funding a set of activities with a group
of others, and especially ifthe federal government
were involved.
So these private public partnerships I think are
incredibly important, because I think private sector is willing
to do their share, but not necessarily on their own.
And I think that's a very important thing.
As far as the perspective from John Holdren, I'll just, let me
give you this observation, which is that in general, when we
PCAST, I've written now, I think this is -- we now have how many,
reports, Amber, 16, 17 reports, something like that, over the
last three years.
So it's a very large number of activities going on.
And, I would say that in general, given the current
physical environment there has been an extremely strong sense
that one shouldn't ask for new resources, right.
And, so, as you know, this report asks for substantial new
resources, and I can tell you that the leadership of PCAST,
both Dr. Holdren and check Dr. Lander, didn't blink.
In this case, the justification is clearly there.
Will this happen in the current congressional environment?
I'm no better at predicting that than you are.
You're probably much better than I am in fact.
And I know that you will work tirelessly on Capitol Hill to
make this happen.
And I'll be happy to help you if I can be of help.
But I can tell you that in terms of the level of support, there
was the broad sense that asking for new money in this current
fiscal environment is I think an extremely difficult thing, but
there was no question among PCAST that the situation in
agriculture warranted it, that the strategy for how the
investment should be made were considered strategic and
appropriate, and that hopefully this will be successful.
So any other questions from the audience?
Please, if you could introduce yourself, briefly.
Conn Nugent: I'm Conn Nugent of the Heinz Center for Science, Economics
and the Environment.
I was gratified to see both in the report and in some of the
remarks that you just made allusions to the ecology of
agriculture and the deep embeddedness of environmental
issue in agriculture,and vice-versa, particularly
Dr. Bergfeld's remark on the need, if you will, to address
that issue.
And I'm wondering if any of the panelists would care to go into
why is it that perhaps the most environmentally important sector
of the American economy seems to be either separate from or even
alienated from this larger, certainly more populous,
Tom Sinclair, environmental movement, ecology, this,
that or the other thing, and are there opportunities
that you foresee, whether they are fiscally, or intellectually
driven, for a reconciliation of the ecological sciences and
industrial agriculture.
Tom, and then --
Catherine Woteki: I'd like to hear from the panelists, but I also have
some thoughts of my own on that.
Daniel Schrag: Go ahead, Cathy.
Catherine Woteki: I think part of what we're suffering from is a lack of
realization, you know, in the greater community at how our
research agenda has really changed dramatically.
And this dichotomization of agriculture on one side and
environmental concerns on the other, for us doesn't exist.
So, I would strongly recommend that if you haven't taken a look
at our action plan and at the white papers that are informing
the directions and the major priorities in our research
programs to do so, because, it really lays out our
current thinking.
It lays out the structure of the questions that we're addressing
in our research programs.
And all of them are really focused on this central
question of how do we sustainably intensify
agricultural production.
So it's agriculture embedded in the larger environment.
Audience Member: Do you think that that will attract the U.S. -- beyond U.S.
citizens that Tom Sinclair was --
Catherine Woteki: I have to admit, when I'm talking to students, this
generation that's in high school and college right now, they are
really motivated by that kind of question.
Yeah.
Tom Sinclair: If you put it in front of them that's what happens.
I get my students, my graduate students, not from applications
to study crop science, but from those that had applied to study
ecology, because their level of a background is very much higher
than what embarrassingly so, what our undergraduates in
agriculture have.
And when I lay out what we're studying, I say these are what
you want to study and it has meaning.
This is what people are eating.
And I have been very successful.
Daniel Schrag: You know, but I think again, frankly it's as much a fault
of the environmental science community, which I'm a big part
of, that we've ignored agriculture as much as that --
I mean agriculture is actually paying attention to this.
It's actually the environmental science culture.
But I actually think it comes back to the institutional
structure that we were talking about earlier.
If you actually look at where the leading -- not necessarily
environmental science departments, but actually
environmental scientists are around the country
at institutions.
Many of those institutions don't have agriculture programs.
And that's just the nature of the way -- the history of the
Merrill Act and the Land Grant institutions, but many of the
leading universities in the natural sciences that have
top programs in ecology, top programs in earth science and
meteorology and oceanography and other areas don't have big
agriculture programs.
There are some exceptions to that and those play incredibly
important roles.
Those handful of institutions that are excellente across those
areas really are incredibly important.
But, for a large part of the community of environmental
scientists that the environmental groups
talk to are in places.
And I'm at one in Harvard, we don't have
an agriculture program.
Audience Member: (inaudible)
Daniel Schrag: It's terrible.
And we need -- we need to fix that.
But, again, it's not necessarily that Harvard should start a
school of agriculture.
The challenge is really to create bridges so that the best
environmental scientists at Harvard collaborate with the
best agricultural scientists at other institutions.
Audience Member: Thank you.
Daniel Schrag: Another question here, please.
Let's wait for the microphone because I think we're on --
we're being recorded.
Wes Jackson: Yeah, Wes Jackson from the Land Institute in Salina, Kansas.
In 2002, Chris Field at Carnegie Institute of Washington and
Stamford had a paper in science, in which he, after a survey of
natural ecosystems on a global basis, concluded that generally
natural ecosystems have great, greater net primary production
than the human managed systems that follow.
As long as we have what I'll call limited hardware in the
form of the annual then we're stuck with something close to
clearcutting every year.
And not giving an opportunity for nature's processes to inform
or research agenda.
So part of the reluctance on the part of ecologists to get into
agriculture is that they don't have an opportunity to take that
knowledge off the shelf that's been available accumulating over
100 years.
You know we have the LTER program with 26 sites around
the country -- well, one is in Puerto Rico -- funded by
the National Science Foundation for, since 1980.
And most of that knowledge sits there unavailable to be used in
agriculture because of the wrong hardware.
Now for sometime we've had now I think shown, not only the
possibility as well as the necessity for building an
agriculture based on the perennialized major crops --
corn, wheat, sorghum -- and so on.
So, this takes long-term commitment to research.
And if we could as a nation begin to make a commitment to a
long-term ecological research effort, then I think we could
promise the American people the end of soil erosion, the end of
-- that is beyond natural replacement levels -- the end
of fossil fuel dependency, and a great reduction in the chemical
contamination of the land and water by having an agriculture
based on the way natural ecosystems work and having
the potential of greater net primary production.
Now hard is that?
And what is it that limits our imagination about making that
possible to our legislators or to a PCAST group.
I think that the swarm of young ecologists that sitting out
there vibrating would quickly come in to be a part of that
research effort.
Daniel Schrag: Wes, thank you very much.
And let me just broaden your question because PCAST, this
workshops we discussed actually talked about possibility of
perennials carrying some of the load in agriculture,
but also other things as well.
And Tom Sinclair in his discussions brought up a variety
of plants that are currently not really used in agriculture,
but potentially -- have the potential to contribute in the
future in ways, especially as the climate is changing
in unusual situations.
And I think again, part of our call for a new investment,
both in basic research at NSF, and also in more competitive
research at USCA was to create this system where radical ideas
could actually get supported and supported to the point
where creative new approaches could actually be sustained.
But Tom, why don't you comment on that more broadly?
Tom Sinclair: I mean, Wes has brought up an approach or many approaches.
I mean, Wes, we're using perennial crops all the
time in agriculture.
Most of it we let the animals go out and harvest.
We don't drag it in.
And but, you know, there's no reason to exclude anything at
this point, including annual crops.
And I think we need to exploit for the minimum impact on the
environment and the maximum return to the farmer.
Daniel Schrag: Okay, I think we have time for one more question.
Over here, please, and then we'll have to wrap up.
Helen Shen: Hi, Helen Shen.
I write Science and News for nature.
And what I wanted to know is this November the California
vote on GMO food labeling, sort of exposed a lot of, you know,
ordinary citizens' fears and concerns about genetically
engineered crops.
And I was wondering, given that this report talks a lot about
food safety and nutritious food and also food security, whether
there were any specific recommendations or discussions
about basic research on the health and environmental effects
of genetically engineered crops, and also communication of those
findings to the public.
Daniel Schrag: Cathy, do you want to comment on this because I know you get
asked about this a lot.
Catherine Woteki: Yes, I mean, we, within the research program that we're
supporting, are supporting quite a bit of genetics and genomics
research in crops as well as in livestock.
That research has been enormously important for
informing classical breeding approaches, as well as using
the new genetic technologies to either do transgenic or cisgenic
types of approaches towards development of mostly plants
that have desirable characteristics.
We feel that application of this knowledge can be used across all
of the different approaches towards agricultural so that
it's very important to continue this fundamental research on the
genetics of crops and livestock.
We also think that the challenge that's ahead of us is so great
with respect to sustainable intensification of agriculture
being able to provide all of the services that are being
requested out of agriculture, beyond food, and beyond bio
products, and all of the other ecosystem services as well,
that we can't turn our backs on any of these approaches.
So perennialization is in that basket too.
But there's -- so you know, we're approaching this that
we have to have a full portfolio of research for
all of the different types of agriculture.
Daniel Schrag: So let me just add to it, what Cathy said.
You know, the big challenge I think here as highlighted,
is partly one of education.
The concerns about genetically modified foods, I think comes
out of -- and this was a perspective I gained from
writing the section on health and safety of the report.
It's actually remarkable how incredibly safe our
food system is.
It was something that we actually were very careful
when we were writing the report, because we had to acknowledge
just how remarkable our current systems of protection are at the
USDA and around the country.
When there is a small outbreak of some, and it's very rare,
but occasionally it happens, it makes headline news all over the
country, because it's so rare.
We just expect that we can take food from farms, transport it
great distances, sell it in our local store, put it on
your table, and you just know it's going to be safe to eat.
That's remarkable.
And I think it's an incredible achievement of our entire
agricultural system from the farm all the way to the
distribution to the table, that we can actually have safe food
and just take it for granted.
The concern over genetically modified food, I think much more
so in Europe than here, comes from I think a lack of awareness
and a lack of education.
And I think the most appropriate avenue is probably to increase
the public's knowledge about what agricultural research is,
what agriculture is.
I think people are unaware actually of how agriculture
works and what are the achievements and the
improvements that have been made over the decades,
which have been phenomenal.
Our society is sustained by the agricultural developments that
occurred in this country over the last few decades.
And I think greater awareness and greater education will go a
long way towards that concern.
Okay.
Any other comments, financial comments from any of the panel?
Cathy, do you want to say anything, concluding words?
Catherine Woteki: Well, just again, a word of thanks to you, to Barbara Shaw,
and all the members of the committee, and the advisers.
Thank you very much.
Daniel Schrag: Great. Thank you, Cathy.
And let me just say again Barbara Shaw really is the
hero who's not here today and really deserves our great thanks
and appreciation.
And ultimately, let's, all of us, I hope can help Cathy Woteki
and Sonny Ramaswamy work hard to make this a reality because
that's really what we need to do next.
Thank you.
Thank you, everybody.
(applause)
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