USDA funding delays under Trump compromise agricultural research

From ScienceMag:

Georg Jander was delighted in May when a grant he’d submitted last year to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to study how maize responds to attacking insects received favorable reviews. But now, 4 months later, he still doesn’t know whether it will be funded. The same cloud of uncertainty hangs over the heads of many agricultural scientists, as USDA continues to postpone grant decisions and fails to announce many new funding opportunities. Jander, a Boyce Thompson Institute plant biologist, says he and “a lot of other people are just frustrated because we don’t know what to do next.”

USDA typically awards more than $1.7 billion in funding each year for a wide range of research on food, nutrition, and agriculture. But by the end of this fiscal year it will have awarded just over $1 billion, according to its public database. Some approved grants have yet to receive a single dollar for work that was expected to begin earlier this year. “We’ve missed an entire field season,” one agricultural researcher says.

It’s not unusual for new administrations to review funding programs. But after President Donald Trump took office in January, his administration went further. It ordered USDA to freeze funding of all awarded grants, a stoppage that lasted for much of the first half of the year. The aim was to identify grants that included work related to diversity, equity, and inclusion, which were canceled wholesale. The agency also canceled grants to universities for research related to climate-smart agriculture. And it stopped awarding new grants.

Other funding agencies took similar steps. But USDA remains behind even as other agencies, such as the National Institutes of Health, have ramped up grant funding in recent months. “It’s been very, very delayed,” says Julie McClure of the Torrey Advisory Group, which lobbies on behalf of the American Society of Agronomy, Crop Science Society of America, and Soil Science Society of America. (USDA did not respond to a request for comment.)

Competitive grants, which fund research at universities and other organizations, have fared the worst. As of 16 September, with 2 weeks left before the end of this fiscal year, USDA’s center for extramural research funding, the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), had awarded just 558 competitive grants, according to its public database. That’s 68% fewer than during the prior fiscal year—and $741 million less in competitively awarded research funds. In contrast, the $800 million of so-called capacity funds, which are largely distributed by formulas to certain universities, has all been committed.

One reason for the shortfall in competitive funding is that NIFA simply did not invite new grant applications for much of the year. The first funding opportunities were only posted in July—and with tight deadlines of just a few weeks. The long-standing Foundational and Applied Science Program, which awards $300 million per year, was posted on 1 August with deadlines as soon as 2 October. “A ridiculously short turnaround time,” says Crispin Taylor, executive director of the American Society of Plant Biology. The agency also appears to have a backlog of applications submitted last year that remain in limbo. The number could be in the thousands, a former USDA staff member says.

Morgan Carter, who studies plant pathogens at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, had hoped a graduate student in her lab could win a USDA fellowship to study new biocontrol approaches for fungi. But the agency has not posted a request for applications. “We don’t know the status of this program.”

Even for scientists who were awarded grants, the path hasn’t been smooth. According to USASpending. gov, a federal database, USDA turned the spigot back on for many suspended grants in August. But the delays complicated research plans. Many labs have delayed hiring postdocs or project managers or have had to scramble to find other support.

What’s causing the delays is unclear. Some observers suspect the White House Office of Management and Budget or the Department of Government Efficiency, formerly run by Elon Musk, have taken charge of funding and are responsible for the holdup. “The real question is who’s making the decisions?” says Elizabeth Stulberg, a lobbyist with Lewis-Burke Associates.

Stulberg adds that because the Senate has only confirmed some of the Trump administration’s nominees for USDA posts (four of 12), the agency also may not have the bandwidth to make swift funding decisions. Staffing has also dropped at NIFA. By March, 11% of its 488 employees had taken the Trump administration’s offer of deferred retirement and another 8% had left for other reasons.

Senate confirmation of entomologist Scott Hutchins as USDA’s undersecretary for research, education, and economics, which could happen as early as this month, could help break the logjam, McClure says. Observers say Hutchins knows agricultural research and USDA. New money Congress has put into agricultural research could also help. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act includes $1.25 billion over 9 years for agricultural research facilities, beginning with the next fiscal year.

But until the delays subside, many researchers remain on tenterhooks. For now, says one pretenure faculty member who has waited more than a year to learn whether a grant submitted to USDA will be funded, “We are all juggling.”

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