Cornerstone Report from Washington

Vol. 7, No. 14 – October 7, 2009

Analysis: Substantial Increases for NIFA in F.Y. 2010 Appropriations Bill

To Members of the APLU System:

- Board on Agriculture Assembly

- Budget and Advocacy Committee

- Council on Agricultural Research, Extension, and Teaching

- Council on Governmental Affairs (Aggies)

The  joint House-Senate conference committee reconciled the differences between the two versions of the F.Y. 2010 Agriculture Appropriations bill and released a conference report. The conference report is expected to be given final approval in both chambers shortly and forwarded to the President for his signature. This report provides additional analysis of the final results for the National Institute of Food and Agriculture.

Agency Overview

The total NIFA budget increased by $121.031 compared to F.Y. 2009. The largest component of this increase was $60.978 million in NIFA’s flagship competitive grants program, the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI). Research and Education line items grew by $97.200 million and Extension programs increased by $20.673 million. After two years of declines, earmarks (special research grants and research/extension federal administration grants) grew by $13.248 million, but as the House Rules Committee points out, the whole bill “has roughly half the number of earmarks as the F.Y. 2008 bill – 322 earmarks worth $219 million, down from 623 worth $400 million.”

BAC Lines Targeted for Enhancement

As shown in Table 1, the 13 NIFA lines targeted for enhancement by the Budget and Advocacy Committee (BAC) grew by a total of $88.402 million compared to F.Y. 2009. Moreover, 11 of the 13 lines received increases, with only Higher Education Challenge Grants and National Needs Fellowship Grants remaining unchanged. As mentioned above, the AFRI  increased the most, but the NIFA lines that support research and extension activities at the 1862, 1890, 1994, and insular area land-grant institutions also saw healthy increases.

Mandatory Funding

There are  four NIFA programs that receive mandatory funds (not subject to appropriations) under the 2008 Farm Bill: (1) Organic Agriculture Research and Extension; (2) Specialty Crops Research; (3) Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development; and (4) Biomass R&D. As shown in Table 2, these four programs are scheduled to receive $117 million in funding in F.Y. 2010. The conference committee did not make any reductions to these four programs, equating to an additional $117 million for important NIFA research, education, and extension programs over the total provided via direct appropriations. (It should be noted that other mandatory programs did receive some reductions.) Including mandatory funding and appropriations, the NIFA budget in F.Y. 2010 will be $1.476 billion.

Other Matters

 The final version of the bill includes language permitting universities to count their unrecovered indirect costs against the matching requirements of the Specialty Crops Research Initiative.
 

Links

NIFA Section from Conference Report:           www.land-grant.org/docs/FY2010/NIFA-SM.pdf

Spreadsheet of All NIFA Lines:                          www.land-grant.org/docs/FY2010/final.xls

The Cornerstone Team