DENVER, October 19, 2023 – The National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) today announced an investment of nearly $22 million in agricultural economics research that includes agricultural markets, international trade, farm labor, consumer behavior and nutrition, food retailing, agricultural production and processing, and agricultural policy.
“The challenges facing the agricultural sector, food production and consumption, and natural resource and environmental management continue to evolve,” said USDA NIFA Director Dr. Manjit Misra. “We at NIFA support research that explores the growing global demands for food production in the face of limited resources and a changing climate. This will have major implications for how we use natural resources, promote healthy diets, invest in science, and promote economic opportunity and quality of life for all Americans.
Misra made the announcement today in Colorado during his keynote address at the annual meeting of the Global Rural Advisory Services Forum, sponsored by the North American Agricultural Advisory Network.
This investment is part of the National Institute of Food and Agriculture’s (NIFA) grant portfolio under the Basic and Applied Sciences Program of the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI). AFRI builds fundamental and applied knowledge in the food and agricultural sciences that is critical to solving current and future societal challenges.
AFRI is the nation’s leading and largest competitive grant program in the agricultural sciences. These grants are available to eligible colleges, universities, and other research organizations.
Examples of the 41 projects include:
- Auburn University researchers will conduct the first comprehensive study to empirically evaluate equivalence scales that compare the economic well-being of differently composed US households over the past 50 years. The results can be widely applied to determine the poverty line, assess social inequality and poverty, calibrate social safety net payments, measure the cost of raising children, and calculate life insurance payments, alimony, and statutory compensation for wrongful death. death.
- Colorado State University researchers, through one of the funded projects, will measure the incidence of persistent food insecurity among at-risk Americans and analyze its causes, as well as estimate mortality rates for individuals experiencing food insecurity and its impact on life expectancy.
- University of California, Davis scientists will analyze the effects of weather, climate change, adaptation, and natural resource scarcity through the lens of irrigated agriculture in California. Specifically, they will quantify the effects of weather and climate change on the incomes of specialty crop producers.
- Virginia Polytechnic Institute researchers will seek to understand the effects of the changing pattern of consumer spending on food at home to food away from home on the distribution of welfare across the food supply chain.
NIFA invests in and advances agricultural research, education and extension across the country to make transformative discoveries that solve societal challenges. NIFA supports initiatives that ensure the long-term viability of agriculture and takes an integrated approach to ensure that breakthroughs in agriculture-related science and technology reach the people who can put them into practice. In FY2023, NIFA’s total investment was $2.6 billion.
Visit our Twitter: @USDA_NIFA; LinkedIn: USDA-NIFA. To learn more about NIFA’s impact on agricultural science, visit www.nifa.usda.gov/impacts.
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