A highly touted research and development program at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) established by Congress in 2018 went years without hiring a director or any staff members, internal emails show.
The Agriculture Advanced Research and Development Authority (AgARDA) at USDA did not hire any employees by October 2022 after Congress first appropriated funding for the research program in 2018, according to internal emails in September 2023 provided to the Daily Caller by the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project.
READ THE EMAILS:
“USDA’s Office of the Chief Scientist has established partnerships to gather stakeholder input to ensure AGARDA has the long-term foundation needed to develop technologies, research tools, and products through advanced research on long-term and high-risk challenges for food and agriculture this will include informing human capital needs,” a researcher with the Congressional Research Service (CRS) apparently mistakenly told the Heritage Foundation in September, the emails show.
“Through this work, the U.S. can maintain our position as a leader in global agricultural Research and Development. The $1 million has been obligated to support the outreach and planning efforts. No staff or an AGARDA director have been hired.”
The CRS researcher received the AgARDA information from a USDA official and then sent it to the Heritage Oversight Project because she apparently mistakenly thought she was communicating with a congressional office, the emails show. CRS declined to comment.
The 2018 Farm Bill designated $50 million annually for the AgARDA program with the goal of spurring innovation and developing breakthrough technology. For the next three years, Congress did not appropriate funds for AgARDA and only directed $1 million to the program in fiscal year (FY) 2022, according to a report from the Institute for Progress.
AgARDA is modeled after the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy (ARPA-E) programs in the Defense Department and Energy Department. The FY 2022 DARPA budget was $3.8 billion and the ARPA-E budget was $427 million, according to the White House.
“AGARDA focuses on R&D that private industry is unlikely to undertake. This research will help ensure that the United States maintains its position as a leader in global agricultural R&D,” according to a page about the 2018 Farm Bill programs on the USDA website.
Congress initially laid out four goals for AgARDA to accelerate American innovation and agricultural research. The goals were to develop solutions to protect against threats to American agriculture, overcome barriers to developing technology, ensure America remains a leader in agricultural technology and undertake research the industry might avoid because of technological and financial uncertainty.
Bipartisan legislation has been put forth in the House and the Senate to double AgARDA’s funding from $50 million to $100 million. The legislation would also expand the scope of AgARDA’s research to cover animal pathogens and projects with goals such as reducing water usage and cutting carbon emissions.
USDA did not respond to the Daily Caller’s request for comment by the time of publication.