Hi my name is Jeanette Thurston I'm the
Science Program and Analysis Officer
here at the National Institute of Food
and Agriculture, NIFA and I'm gonna start
off with the set of slides today. I'm
talking about competitive programs. So to
get going I'm gonna give you an overview
of the agency. The National Institute of
Food and Agriculture was established in
the 2008 Farm Bill.
And with this establishment, all of the
predecessor agency, that was CSREES, all
those authorities transferred to NIFA on
October 1st of 2009 and we actually
became NIFA and launched as NIFA on
October 8, 2009. With NIFA we have a
presidential appointee and our first one as
many of you know was Dr. Sonny
Ramaswamy and we're now happy to have
Dr. Scott Angle who is our new director
of NIFA. Now the structure of NIFA. So
you can always take a look at our
website and see the organizational
structure. We have both an operation side
of NIFA we have a program side of
NIFA and this slide really is focused
on that program side. The program side is
consists of four Institutes but also
missing here it consists of the Center
for International Programs. Those four
Institutes consist of the Institute of
Bioenergy, Climate and Environment; the
Institute of Food Production and
Sustainability; the Institute of Food
Safety and Nutrition; and the Institute
of Youth, Family and Community. And all
these are led by a Deputy Director as
you see here. So what does NIFA really
do? Well our mission is to solve societal
challenges to advance research, education,
and extension to solve these challenges. And
we help to facilitate the integration of
programmatic functions by supporting
again research, education, and extension.
The impact that NIFA has, we have a great
deal of impact as many of you know or
you wouldn't be sitting and in the seats
that you are and and have offered to
become a Panel Manager for NIFA's
programs. But we support research,
education, and extension with a focus on
tangible, meaningful outcomes. We promote
relevant value-added programs and services
and we hope to drive outcomes that
matter to the American people and
actually all over the world. So you may
have taken a look at, and you
find these on our website, that we have
our impact annual reports and our goal
really is to support high impact science
and when we talk about science we're really
referring to not only research but also
education and extension. So our budget
has really changed over the years. I've
been at NIFA for 10 years now and
it's really increased and as you can see
here we have a pie chart that we've put
together that shows the breakdown
between research and education
activities meaning the biggest piece of
the pie, integrated activities, extension
activities, and our mandatory and
endowment funding, and I'll go over these
in just a few moments. Our total budget
for fiscal year 2019 is one point..about
little over 1.7 billion dollars. So how
do we achieve our mission? We do this
through several different funding
mechanisms. Of course we have capacity
funding, or a lot of folks like to call
this formula funds. Some of those
programs include Evans-Allen, Hatch, Animal
Health and Disease, McIntire-Stennis, and
Smith-Lever. Of course today our focus
is on competitive grant programs or
competitive grant funding. And here at
NIFA we have over 30 competitive grant
programs, many with very broad
eligibility meaning that my mom and dad
at home can actually apply for some of
our programs. Not all of those, some of
them have more fine-tuned eligibility or
more specific eligibility and you can
find those kinds of details in our
request for applications. Now our
competitive grants flagship program is
the Agriculture and Food Research
Initiative or AFRI. We have a lot of
other competitive programs as well. Some
of these competitive programs fall under
mandatory programs. This includes a
Specialty Crop Research Initiative, the
Organic Agriculture Research and
Extension Initiative, Beginning Farmers
and Ranchers, and others. We also have the
Biotechnology Risk Assesment Research Grants
Program, SBIR or Small Business Research Program,
and Crop Protection and Pest Management,
just just to name a few. We have, like I
said, over 30 competitive grant programs
here at NIFA. So how do we identify those
proposals that have the highest
scientific merit? As much as we'd like to
fund
every proposal that comes into our
program, we certainly can't. And we
wouldn't want to if they don't, if
they don't rise to the top and having
that really high merit. So NIFA really
relies on folks like you. We rely on a
rigorous peer review process by
research, extension and...or
education experts to select
proposals of the highest merit. The
program specific evaluation criteria,
this is found in the RFA, these include a
wide variety of things depending on the
program and can include scientific merit,
qualifications of the project team, the
capacity and availability
of facilities, project planning and
management, and of course relevance to
agriculture and the program's priorities.
So when when thinking about the
Agriculture and Food Research
Initiative, or AFRI, we have several
different RFAs or kind of umbrella
programs. Those programs include
Education and Workforce Development, and
this used to be called the ELI program
or the Education and Literacy Initiative.
That's one RFA that is released in
the AFRI program.
Another is the Foundational and Applied
Science Program. This really focuses on
basic and applied research, but also has
extension and education opportunities as
well.
There are CAP and standard grants,
there's an Exploratory program and
there's of course the CARE program, as
well as many many others. This is
probably the largest, not probably it is
the largest RFA within the AFRI
program. And finally the newer
Sustainable Agricultural Systems program.
This program came out a few years ago,
this is really focused on the
agricultural system from farm all the
way to the consumer. So it was pretty
exciting to see this chart, we have had
increases with AFRI pretty much since
I've began at NIFA. So over the last 10
years we saw a substantial increase,
especially since 2013, and here we are in
2019 at 425 million dollars. So what
types of grants? Let's talk about some of
the AFRI grants that we offer in the
various priority areas of AFRI. These
can include the standard grants: these
can be research, education, and
extension. They can be what we call
single function, so they can be research
only, education only or ...
actually not education only, extension
only, and integrated. So when we talk
about integrated programs it's gonna
specify on the RFA whether or not...
whether or not, it needs to have all
three agricultural science components,
research, education, and extension or whether
or not it's just what we consider standard
integrated, meaning it needs to have at
least two out of the three science
functions. So for example research and
education or research and extension. We
also have grant types of conference
grants, coordinated agriculture projects.
We also have FASE grants and there are
eligibility restrictions on some of
these and these can include new
investigator, pre- and postdoctoral
fellowships in our Education and
Workforce Development program, and also
strengthening grants. In fiscal year 2018,
the Education and Workforce Development
Program, again this used to be called ELI,
the focus is on the professional
development of secondary school teachers
and education professionals, as well as
training of undergraduate students and
pre-doctoral and postdoctoral
fellows, which is very similar to ELI
with a couple new additions. In 2018 the
AFRI Foundational and Applied Science
program is still broken down by those
six farm bill areas, as farm bill areas
include plant health and production and
plant products; animal health and production
and animal products; food safety, nutrition,
and health; bioenergy, natural resources,
and the environment; agriculture systems
and technology; agriculture economics
and rural communities. And I want to
highlight that we also have some
cross-cutting initiatives and these
include the Critical Agricultural
Research and Extension program, as well
as Exploratory Research. So the newest, so
as some of you may remember the AFRI
program had challenge areas and those
challenge areas are now combined and
under the umbrella of Sustainable
Agricultural Systems, so instead of just
looking at for example previous
challenge area of food safety, we're now
looking at the entire system
in Sustainable Agricultural Systems. So
these proposals may include food safety
aspects, they may include production
aspects, they may include other aspects
that you may have seen in previous
challenge areas. There was a new RFA
in 2018. These support very large
integrated projects, so again integrated
projects are those that consider at least
two and sometimes three of the science
functions: research, education, extension
and so that these projects need to
address major outcomes of agricultural
systems. This program is supporting up to
10 million dollars per project as a
Coordinated Agricultural Project or CAP
project. So moving on we
spent a lot of time on AFRI, but I do
want to take a little bit of time on
some of our other competitive programs,
one of which is the Specialty Crop
Research Initiative. The purpose of this
program really is to address the
critical needs of the specialty crop
industry. This program awards grants that
support research and extension and they
address key challenges of national
regional and multi-state importance in
sustaining all components of food
and agriculture including
conventional and organic production
systems. Down at the bottom here you'll
see a bullet of actually the definition of
specialty crops. So just if you're
serving as a Panel Manager, as a panelist
on Specialty Crops Research Initiative
competitive panel, know that specialty
crops is defined as fruits and
vegetables, tree nuts, dried fruits,
horticulture, and nursery crops which
also includes floriculture.
Another program that NIFA has,
another important competitive program, is
the Organic Agriculture Research and Extension
Initiative, or OREI. And this program
really seeks to solve critical organic
agriculture issues, it identifies
priorities or problems that need to be
solved through the integration of
research, education, and extension
activities. The purpose of this program
is to fund projects that will enhance
the ability of producers and processors
who have already adopted
organic standards to grow and market
high quality organic agricultural
products.
Similarly, Beginning Farmer and Rancher
Development Program, another competitive
program here at NIFA. Again I'm not going
to be able to cover all of these, we have
over 30 competitive programs and these
can easily be found on our website. But
Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development
Program helps to develop and offer
education, it offers training and
outreach as well as mentoring programs
to enhance the sustainability of the
next generation of farmers. Community
Food Projects. This program helps to meet
the food needs of low-income people by
increasing self-reliance and promoting a
comprehensive response to food, farm, and
nutrition. And the Biotechnology Risk
Assessment Grants Program or BRAG as we
like to call it around here at NIFA. This
program really helps to identify and
develop management practices to minimize
potential risks associated with
genetically engineered animals, plants,
and microorganisms. And I think this is
the last competitive program that I'll
be touching upon today and this is a
Small Business Innovation Research
program or SBIR. This of course is a
program, as you all know, this is across
federal government. At NIFA
we support research for the development
of profit-making technology, product, or
service in relation to agriculture.
There's two phases of the program.
There's Phase One which is proof of
concept and Phase Two which is
development and commercialization.
Actually there's one more program I'm
going to go over and it's Crop
Protection and Pest Management.
This program its purpose really is to
address high priority issues that's
related to pests and their management
using IPM approaches at the state,
regional, and national levels. This
program supports projects that will
ensure food security and this program
ensures that we respond effectively to
other major societal pest management
challenges with a comprehensive
IPM approach that are economically
viable, ecologically prudent, and safe for
human health. So for all of these
competitive programs that I
briefly went over today, you can
certainly go to our website and read
more detail, for example on the SBIR
program what goes into that Phase One
and Phase Two parts of the program, as
well as the other competitive programs
that we have here at NIFA that we
didn't have time to go over today. So in
our programs I think another important
thing to point out we do have
interagency collaborations and they are
encouraged and we have several of those.
The really nice thing about these
collaborations is it allows us, as well
as our colleagues at other federal
agencies, to leverage our very tight
budgets. It also minimizes duplication or
overlap and it enhances coordination of
the science among the agencies. Our
National Program Leaders, or NPLs, these
folks are science staff actively
participate in Interagency Working
Groups under the President's National
Science and Technology Council. And
in a lot of ways and a lot of times
our NPLs are able to make connections to
our colleagues and these other federal
agencies and actually establish some of
these collaborations. So some of these
interagency collaborations include
things like Innovations at the Nexus of
Food, Energy, and Water, that's an NSF
program that NIFA is a part of, as well as
the Integrated Biorefinery Optimization
program that's in collaboration with DOE,
the National Robotics Initiative which
is a wide collaboration not only includes
NIFA, but NSF, NASA, DOD, and DOE,
Plant Biotic Interactions is another one,
and Food Specific Molecular Profiles
and Biomarkers of Food and Nutrient
Intake, and Dietary Exposure at NIH,
and there are many many others. So I
think a really common question at least
that I know that I get and my colleagues
here at NIFA get is how in the heck do
you guys determine what are the
priorities for these programs, what is
actually solicited and funded in your
programs, the specific types of science.
That's education, research, and extension.
Well, stakeholder input is very vital to
that. Stakeholder input from folks like
you, from folks across the country, helps
to identify critical issues and
priorities for research, education,
and extension
in the various programs that we have. So
here at NIFA as some of you may know,
we've started some formal stakeholder
listening sessions. It's called NIFA
Listens. That started two years ago. We
plan on keeping that going. We also get
stakeholder input through our RFA
process as well, there's an email address
where folks can submit stakeholder input.
As well as when our science staff, our
National Program Leaders, even our
Program Specialists are heading out to
national meetings, scientific societies,
National Academy Sciences, and other
types of activities, they're collecting
stakeholder input as well. We get
stakeholder input from a wide variety of
people across this country as shown here
on this slide and we value it and we use
it in identifying those priorities that
you see in our RFAs. So I think that
concludes this presentation and if you
have any questions please talk to your
NIFA program team. They'd be happy to
answer any additional questions. Also
feel free to take a look at our website,
it's pretty easy to maneuver and
search for programs that you have
questions about. Thanks so much for your
time.
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