Science Policy Report

Address all comments to the Science Policy Office at:
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22 December 2021

In This Issue:

Policy News

Science and Society News

International Corner

Research, Education, Extension Funding Opportunities

Policy News

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said during a private caucus call Tuesday night that he plans to hold a floor vote on President Joe Biden's social spending bill in January, even as the legislation's fate remains uncertain. Senate Democrats convened virtually on the longest night of the year for the first time since Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) said over the weekend that he could not support Biden’s $1.7 trillion climate and social policy plan in its current form. During the call, Schumer vowed to press ahead with the hope of eventually shaping a deal that all 50 members of the Democratic caucus can support. Read the full article.

Anti-GMO propaganda documentary films have become a prime source of misinformation. Earlier this year, Iowa State University hosted about 300 high school students from around the state who participated in the World Food Prize Youth Institute. I served as one of the discussion leaders and had the opportunity to talk with several students during the day. Read the full article.

Could tinkering with photosynthesis prevent a global food crisis? This story begins about two billion years ago, when the world, if not young, exactly, was a lot more impressionable. The planet spun faster, so the sun rose every twenty-one hours. The earliest continents were forming—Arctica, for instance, which persists as bits and pieces of Siberia. Most of the globe was given over to oceans, and the oceans teemed with microbes. Read the full article.

Being severely overweight has never been so dangerous. During the COVID-19 epidemic, Americans who are obese, without any other risk factors, were hospitalized at three times the rate of those who weren't, by some estimates. When combined with other diet-related health conditions such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes, obesity raises the risk of hospitalization sixfold and the risk of death twelvefold. Read the full article.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday asked President Joe Biden's administration for its views on whether the justices should hear Bayer AG's bid to dismiss claims by customers who contend its Roundup weedkiller causes cancer, as the company seeks to avoid potentially billions of dollars in damages. Bayer in August filed a petition with the Supreme Court to reverse a lower court decision that upheld $25 million in damages awarded to California resident Edwin Hardeman, a Roundup user who blamed his cancer on the German pharmaceutical and chemical giant's glyphosate-based weedkillers. Read the full article.

Science and Society News

For 2021, the ASA, CSSA, SSSA Congressional Visits Day will be a VIRTUAL event! VCVD participants will be put into small groups to meet with Members of Congress and their staff and advocate for USDA research funding. Participants will attend 3-6 webinar meetings with Members of Congress and their staff. Scheduling and logistics for the virtual meetings will be provided and all participants will receive policy, communication, and advocacy training to prepare you to effectively work with members of Congress and their staff. VCVD is an exciting opportunity to use your voice and your skills to help shape federal science policy. Applications for two awards to participate in VCVD are now open, deadline January 7. Learn more and apply here.

The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated supply chain issues, creating supply and demand shocks that stressed the system. Fallen prey to rising prices, backorders, and shortages of essential equipment, researchers are making changes to their workflow. Early career members and a supply chain expert, Gad Allon, offer insights for handling supply chain disruptions. Read the full article.

Agricultural research innovation requires a profound shift in data management to seize upon the potential of the Digital Age. A new commentary in Agricultural & Environmental Letters discusses how the USDA-ARS is working to achieve this transformation from within with its Partnerships for Data Innovations (PDI). Read the full article.

Current maize production in Africa and Asia is under serious threat from the pest fall armyworm (Spodoptera frudiperda), or FAW. Climate change exacerbates this threat. A simulation study based on four years of FAW monitoring indicated that a one-degree increase in weekly mean temperature may nearly double FAW populations. A recent study conducted by researchers at the Centre for Agriculture and Bioscience International (CABI) shows evidence of FAW resistance acting through diverse mechanisms in several maize landraces, germplasm lines, native populations, and crop wild relatives. Read the full article.

International Corner

The four sons of María Bonilla and Esteban Funes all embarked on the treacherous journey north, one of them aged 10, preferring the life of an unauthorized migrant in America to a coffee farmer in Central America. Coffee doesn't pay for many of the hundreds of thousands of Central American farmers who produce the delicate arabica beans for the world's finest grounds. Increasingly, they are giving up, becoming part of a broader migrant flow to the U.S.-Mexico border that U.S. data shows has hit a record high this year. Read the full article.

At last month’s COP26 climate conference in Glasgow, US officials touted a new strategy to counter malnutrition in Africa – a problem that will only become worse in the face of climate change. But while officials like Power have emphasised their commitment to working with various local and international partners in their effort to end malnutrition and hunger in Africa, they have yet to acknowledge how the US is increasingly failing the group best placed to address Africa’s malnutrition and food security problem: smallholder farmers. Read the full article.

Research, Education, Extension Funding Opportunities

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Office of Partnerships and Public Engagement (OPPE) is accepting applications for 2022 Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSI) Fellows through the E. Kika De La Garza Fellowship Program. These fellowships introduce faculty and staff from Hispanic-Serving Institutions to the vast array of USDA resources available to them. Deadline: Mar 2. Read the full announcement.

The DOE SC program in Biological and Environmental Research (BER) solicits applications for: a) understanding of regulatory elements that control plant gene expression; b) approaches to understand the biological mechanisms that lead to differential gene expression of different members of gene families; and c) dissection of multigene traits and understanding their component parts. Pre-application Deadline: Jan 14. Read the full announcement.

The DOE SC program in Biological and Environmental Research (BER) solicits applications for basic research that will fundamentally enhance or transform our understanding of microbial processes in terrestrial ecosystems. Of interest to the Program are interdisciplinary projects grounded in holistic, systems-level approaches to understand microbial community interactions and biogeochemical cycling. Specifically, the Program seeks to elucidate fundamental principles that advance our understanding of regulatory, metabolic, and signaling networks among microbes, in microbe-plant interactions, the cycling and long-term storage or sequestration of carbon in soils, and the biogeochemical conversion of other elements, including nutrients, particularly as they relate to rapidly changing environmental conditions. Deadline: Jan 14. Read the full announcement.

The Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship (IDALS) and partners worked with the USDA Risk Management Agency (RMA) to establish a project aimed at expanding usage of cover crops in Iowa. Through this project, IDALS will provide up to $5 per acre for cover crops to eligible applicants. Funding will be provided through USDA-RMA as an additional insurance premium discount through normal crop insurance processes. The premium reduction will be available for fall-planted cover crops with a spring-planted cash crop. Cover crop acres currently enrolled in state and/or federal programs are not eligible for this program. Deadline: Jan 15. Read the full announcement.

North Dakota Department of Agriculture is accepting applications for Specialty Crop Block Grants to enhance the competitiveness of specialty crops in North Dakota. Eligible activities include enhancing food safety; pest and disease control; developing new and improved seed varieties and specialty crops; and increasing child and adult nutrition knowledge and consumption of specialty crops. Organizations, institutions, and individuals may apply for projects that do not directly benefit specific, commercial products or profit a single organization, institution, or individual. Read the full announcement.

Wetland Program Development Grants (WPDGs) assist state, territorial, tribal, local government agencies and interstate/intertribal entities in developing or refining state/territorial/tribal/local programs which protect, manage, and restore wetlands. The primary focus of these grants is to develop/refine state, territorial and tribal wetland programs. A secondary focus is to develop/refine local (e.g., county or municipal) programs. All applications submitted under this RFA must be for projects that develop or refine state/territorial/tribal/local government wetland programs. Implementation of wetland protection programs is not an eligible project under this announcement. An implementation project is one that is accomplished through the performance of routine, traditional, or established practices, or a project that is simply intended to carry out a task rather than transfer information or advance the state of knowledge. All monitoring and mapping projects should transfer information or advance the state of knowledge and therefore are eligible under this grant. Deadline: Jan 21. Read the full announcement.

The program supports the Pooled Monitoring Initiative, which is designed to address key stormwater and stream restoration questions posed by the regulatory and practitioner communities. Investigators may request funds to undertake the following activities: 1. Conduct a literature review/synthesis, if the case can be made that enough is already known about a question; 2. Answer a component of the question with a research project in which specific hypotheses are tested. Research projects may include experimental or descriptive work in the field; experimental work in the laboratory; modeling studies; and/or use of existing data, if deemed appropriately suited (properly collected with appropriate metadata); or 3. Develop a regulatory or practitioner tool related to one or more of the questions that advances the pace or efficacy of the field in question, if the case can be made that the tool is needed and there is ample information to support tool development. Approximately $1.1 million has been allocated for the research program. Literature reviews will be funded at up to $50,000 and there is no cap for research projects. Match is encouraged but not required. Deadline: Jan 27. Read the full announcement.

The Southeastern Massachusetts Agricultural Partnership offers the Technology, Innovation, and Excellence (TIE) Award program for farmers in Bristol, Plymouth, and Norfolk counties of Massachusetts. This program encourages local farmers to trial new equipment, implement new farm systems, and address challenges farmers in the region collectively face. The TIE Award is intended to lower the economic barriers to innovation, with grants ranging from $500 to $3,000, depending on the merits of the project. Deadline: Feb 1. Read the full announcement.

The U.S. EPA has announced the availability of $12 million in funding to support historically underserved farmers within the Gulf of Mexico watershed through the Farmer to Farmer grant program. EPA plans to award four cooperative agreements, with up to $3 million of funding each. Grant awards may be issued for a project period up to five years, beginning in May 2022. Project activities can include surveys, studies, research, investigation, experimentation, education, training, and/or demonstrations. The proposed projects must include collaboration and sustainable and resilient agriculture operations. Additionally, the proposed projects must be focused on at least one of the following activities: water quality, habitat, or sustainable forest management. Eligible applicants include state agencies, federally recognized tribes and tribal consortia, any agency or instrumentality of local governments, nonprofit organizations, interstate agencies, and colleges and universities. Deadline: Feb 4. Read the full announcement.

The Competitive State Wildlife Grant (C-SWG) Program provides Federal grant funds to help you and your partners implement programs for the benefit of fish and wildlife and their habitats, including species that are not hunted or fished. Eligible activities include conservation planning and implementation. Planning activities must contribute directly to the development or modification of your Wildlife Action Plan (Plan) approved by the Director of the Service or other Service designee. Implementation activities are those that you carry out to execute your Plan. Priority for use of these funds must be placed on your identified species of greatest conservation need (SGCN) and their habitats, and should take into consideration the relative level of funding available for the conservation of these species. Ineligible activities include wildlife education and law enforcement activities, unless they are a minor or incidental component considered critical to the success of your project. Deadline: Feb 19. Read the full announcement.

Sources: Politico, Genetic Literacy Project, New Yorker Magazine, Newsweek, Reuters, Al Jazeera,

Vision: The Societies Washington, DC Science Policy Office (SPO) will advocate the importance and value of the agronomic, crop and soil sciences in developing national science policy and ensuring the necessary public-sector investment in the continued health of the environment for the well being of humanity. The SPO will assimilate, interpret, and disseminate in a timely manner to Society members information about relevant agricultural, natural resources and environmental legislation, rules and regulations under consideration by Congress and the Administration.

This page of the ASA-CSSA-SSSA web site will highlight current news items relevant to Science Policy. It is not an endorsement of any position.