And finally, agricultural research, which has long probed the interactions of the living world, can add to the storehouse of knowledge on which sound environmental policy can be based, the report suggested. They suggested that agricultural research can maintain open space while creating jobs, reduce agricultural pollutants, enhance the visual environment, and provide the habitat necessary to maintain a healthy diversity among plant and animal species. Whether the goal is to promote health, global peace or a sound environment, the United States would be better off investing a relatively small amount in agricultural research, teaching and public service and thus reducing the ultimate costs of treating disease, resolving international conflicts and repairing environmental damage, Vanderhoef and fellow report authors urged. In other scientific areas, federal grant money is largely allocated on a competitive basis-researchers' grant applications are reviewed and judged according to scientific merit. The new report suggested that a new federal initiative be developed to capture public interest and congressional support and increase federal research funding for competitive, peer-reviewed agricultural research.
Initiatives are programs that direct funding into specific areas of research interest.
For example, the U.S. Department of Agriculture currently supports initiatives dealing with climate-change technology and with future agriculture and food systems, as well as a general National Research Initiative program. The National Association for State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges plans to lay the groundwork for developing the proposed new initiative. The initiative they outline will be a major priority of this organization. Dateline UC Davis is the faculty and staff newspaper for the University of California, Davis.