National Research Initiative A Vital Competitive Grants Program in Food, Fiber, and Natural-Resources Research (2000) / Chapter Skim
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Executive Summary
Executive Summary
Pages 1-14
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From page 1... ...
Equally impressive advances are occurring in information technology, providing the opportunity to increase productivity, minimize environmental impacts, and fundamentally alter decision-making. The ability of the United States to resolve challenges to the food, fiber, and natural-resources system by developing sustainable food and fiber production; enhancing food safety, quality, and nutrition; protecting an increasingly fragile environment; responding to predictable cycles of global warming; and developing alternative energy sources depends on the depth of public knowledge, the public availability of technologies, and the skill and insight to apply them.
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. The $1.6 billion that USDA spends on research through non-NRI programs is distributed noncompetitively through intramural research grants to USDA staff (which can include cooperative agreements with land grant universities and other organizations)
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The scientific staff consists of the chief scientist, division directors, program directors, and the rotating panel managers recruited from the research community to administer NRI review panels. STUDY PROCESS In 1997, USDA asked the National Research Council's Board on Agriculture (now the Board on Agriculture and Natural Resources)
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In the committee's opinion, past public research and current private activities cannot meet the needs that are being created by population growth, climate change, and naturalresource deterioration or the challenges related to food safety and nutrition and to the growing convergence of foods and medical research. THE NRI'S MISSION A successful grants program contains elements of value, relevance, quality, fairness, and flexibility.
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The committee views the NRI as a model of merit-based peer-reviewed research in USDA. Because it uses a competitive review process to rank Strengthening grants are made available to faculty of small- and medium-sized academic institutions or institutions in USDA-EPSCoR (Experimental Program for Stimulating Competitive Research)
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The National Research Council has recently released a report, Evaluating Federal Research Programs, on accounting for federal outcomes as part of the Government Performance and Results Act mandate. The NRI should use the recommendations in that report.
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But the needs for transparency, access to the current research agenda, and documentation of past outcomes suggest a substantial expansion in communication strategy. A Web site could be linked to nontechnical summaries, technical abstracts, impact statements, and publications and to a catalogue of current and past funded projects.
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Some NRI divisions have been relatively stable programmatically since their inception, whereas others have seen many program starts and stops. The subdivision of the NRI's six main research areas into 26 programs solely by research "category", in the absence of an overall strategic plan, might have been partly responsible for a lack of critical mass among the NRI's natural stakeholders, particularly because the recommended increases in research funding to $500 million did not materialize.
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Intramural research is represented by ARS and ERS, which report directly to the under secretary for research, education and economics, as does CSREES. The committee strongly recommends that extramural competitive research be given an organizational stature that would allow it to compete effectively for resources with formula funds and special grants and to participate directly in USDA's high-level priorit~v-setting process.
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Although past chief scientists have done excellent work, having a part-time chief scientist impedes continuity in accountability and leadership and counters successful long-range planning and followup and consistent stakeholder involvement. The necessary duties of the chief scientist-administrator of ECRS, in addition to those now assigned within the NRI, would include directing the program and developing a definitive strategic plan and advocacy for the NRI program.
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NRI research grants are much smaller and shorter than grants supporting similar types of research at NSF, NIH, and DOE. Continued underfunding of NRI research grants relative to those of other federal research agencies will tend to discourage new researchers outside the traditional food and fiber system from applying for NRI grants one original goal of the NRI.
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Although the increase from 14% to 19% reduces the gap between overhead rates on NRI grants and rates on grants awarded by other federal agencies, overhead rates for most academic and private-sector research institutions are significantly higher than the 19% limit currently allowed. Average overhead rates for NSF's Biology Directorate, for example, are approximately 45% of the modified total direct costs of the award nearly double the NRI limit.
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The committee believes that Congress could help broaden the scope of NRI researchers beyond the traditional food, fiber, and natural-resources system one of the original goals of the program by allowing the NRI to use the same negotiated overhead rates used by other federal agencies. This action, together with the increased grant amounts reconn~ended previously, would make the NRI a more attractive source of funding to all institutions and researchers and could encourage proposals from researchers from outside the traditional food, fiber, and natural-resources system The committee recommends that by 2005 the NRI budget be increased to a level equivalent (adjustedfor inflation)
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The ability to utilize large amounts of new funding effectively will be compromised unless recommended changes to the prioritysetting process and NRI's organization are implemented. A NATIONAL FOOD, FIBER, AND NATURAL-RESOURCES RESEARCH COMPLEX If implemented, the recommendations growing out of this third National Research Council review of the NRI (the other two were in 1989 and 1994)
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