Description
The consumer has placed food safety among the highest priorities of issues that impact agricultural research. Earlier, the potential contamination of plant and food with chemical residues dominated concerns. With recent outbreaks of E coli, the public has recognized that microbiological contamination of food can have life-threatening consequences. New foods have been introduced into the market, the food system has become more complex, major demographic changes have occurred, and new processing methods have been developed. A modern statistical system for inspection of animal and poultry products has introduced new questions and needs for knowledge that transcend the entire production system from farm to fork. The concept of zero tolerance to certain substances has come under increasing attack and a more workable science-based alternative is being sought.
Approach
Research is needed to identify the causes and costs of foodborne diseases more effectively and to improve methods for their detection, assessment and control. In addition, knowledge is needed concerning technologies to monitor and maintain product quality, retard spoilage and/or contamination from production to consumer, and effectively communicate information about foodborne diseases hazards to the public.
Relationships to Program Areas
Food safety is a component of four of the six major program areas in this plan. This reflects the recognition of the need to conduct research that contributes to the development of an inclusive concept of risk avoidance and that includes reduction of the potential for contamination at the farm or ranch, in processing and manufacturing of food products, in transportation and storage, marketing, and in preparation and consumption. Food safety begins with research to increase natural resistance in both plants and animals to microorganisms that cause human illness and includes natural resistance to plant and animal diseases that result in the reduction of chemicals in food production. Modern biotechnology is providing tools for monitoring and diagnosing foodborne diseases with increased precision and accuracy. New methods for enhancing safety during all parts of the manufacturing and storing process are emerging.
Impact
The Centers for Disease Control estimates that more than 6 million cases of foodborne illness resulting in 8,000 deaths occur each year, at a total cost of about $5 billion. The role of foodborne microorganisms and natural and manmade chemicals in chronic diseases, such as arthritis, diarrhea, and cancer, remains undetermined. Successful outcomes of broadly based research will enable us to better identify the causes and costs of foodborne diseases and to improve methods for their detection, assessment, and control. Ultimately, the impact will be seen in reduction of these statistics with attendant relief of human suffering and economic savings resulting from cost of treatment and absences from the workplace.
Description
As NAFTA and changes in the GATT are coupled with budget-driven reductions in commodity and federal insurance programs, U.S. agriculture must increasingly compete in the international marketplace to maintain its health and vigor and to continue to provide one of the largest offsets to the continuing U.S. trade deficit. In the absence of subsidies and insurance, research and development are more critical than ever as farmers and ranchers look to new knowledge and technology to develop competitive advantages and to reduce the economic and weather driven risks of production. This plan provides a road map for increasing global competitiveness through a broad set of inter-related research activities that act together to provide the next generation of know-how that will allow U.S. agriculture to continue to compete in the world market using methods of farming that are both socially and environmentally sustainable.
Approach
Development of animal and plant production systems that are economical and meet environmental and social expectations will contribute to the competitiveness, profitability, and sustainability of U.S. agriculture. Research to develop new technologies that utilize bioprocesses to add value, enhance quality, safety and utility to U.S. agricultural and forestry raw products will enhance the competitiveness of the U.S. food and fiber system. A better understanding of the demographic, social, cultural, economic, and policy factors influencing global market demand for developing marketing strategies is key to the U.S. maintaining a leadership role in the world market.
Relationships to Program Areas
Program areas linked to this cross-cutting issue include research in food safety, conversion of processing byproducts, food quality and value, new or improved non-food products, enhancement of agricultural and rural economies, strengthening of communities, integrated/sustainable animal production systems, quality of animal food products, alternative plant management systems, and resource management decision systems.
Impact
The research agenda shown in this plan will provide new knowledge and technology that will reduce the cost of production of food and fiber, reduce the use of harmful chemicals, and conserve precious natural resources. The agenda will provide improved quality and safety of food products tailored to meet both domestic and international consumer needs and preferences. The industry will move towards exporting finished rather than raw products. New processing and manufacturing methods will further create a competitive advantage for U.S. products both in the domestic and international market place.
Description
IPM involves ecologically-based practices that are used to manage insects pests, diseases, nematodes, and weeds by use of resistant hosts, cultural practices, biological agents and the judicious use of pesticides. It involves the appropriate integration of these components in strategies to optimize pest control for both plant and animal agriculture while minimizing environmental effects and expense.
Approach
IPM research is taking advantage of the exploding sciences related to biotechnology to develop conceptually new methods of pest management using natural resistance and related strategies. Putting the pieces of new technology together into a management framework involves a systems approach to model and predict outcomes of alternative management decisions. Research agendas related to both biological and social sciences are necessary to provide the knowledge base for a balanced and optimized production systems approach.
Relationships to Program Areas
IPM is an integral part of the research agenda for both plant and animal systems and has immediate applications in the areas of food processing, quality, and safety. It is also an integral part of the broad research agenda on production systems which have their genesis and their basic structure centered on earlier management concepts for IPM alone. Research on IPM offers one of the principle opportunities to harmonize the production of food and fiber and the prudent use and conservation of natural resources.
Impact
Pests are a limiting factor in agricultural production and farm profitability with as much as 30 percent to 50 percent of variable costs of production attributed to the management of pests. Chemical residues are perceived by consumers to be one of the major food-related threats to human health. The products of IPM research will reduce expense and potential health and environmental risks of chemical pesticides, and reduce the problems of increasing resistance of pests to chemicals and regulatory loss of products. Lower pesticide use will increase international competitiveness and contribute to maintaining biodiversity.
Ecosystems are groups of plants, animals, and microbes interacting with each other and their environment. All ecosystems are directly or indirectly impacted by human activity. Ecosystems range from microscopic microcosms to broad basins and landscapes. Food and fiber production occurs within the hierarchical arrangement of related ecosystems. Agroecosystems, rangeland ecosystems, and forest ecosystems are manipulated by man to produce food, fiber, fuel, and shelter. There is a growing need to understand the relationships between the various components of broader ecosystems and the impact that they have on each other, and to develop strategies that assure the preservation, remediation, and enhancement of natural resources in the context of their continuing use in fulfilling human needs.
Approach
This plan describes a hierarchial interrelated set of initiatives that employs the systems approach to establish interrelationships between sustainable use of natural resources, procurement of inputs, production practices, marketing strategies, and socioeconomic consequences in food and fiber production.
Integrated cropping systems and integrated livestock production systems are described separately in this document but ultimately must be interrelated into linked livestock-forage/feed systems. Production systems involving intensive use of natural resources impact broader ecosystems, influencing water and soil quality and the health of more extensively managed ecosystems such as forests, rangelands, wetlands, and estuaries. Food processors and manufacturers must be concerned with factors that pertain to the safety and quality of their products, beginning with raw materials and ending with consumer food handling and preparation. Byproducts of food and fiber processing are a potential threat to broader ecosystems unless they are turned into useful non-environmentally threatening residues. A systems approach is involved in research to provide methods to deal with these interrelationships.
Relationship to Program Areas
Specific elements from all program areas are linked to this cross-cutting issue. Especially relevant are those efforts that deal with developing integrated systems, including managing ecosystems for biodiversity and societal benefits, enhancing agricultural and rural economies, using integrated and sustainable animal production systems, and developing alternative plant management systems.
Impact
The systems approach for agriculture begins in individual fields, pastures, and forests and ends in dealing with broader basins, watersheds, and landscapes. This approach employs quantitative models that define interrelationships and show how related pieces fit together. These models are useful in understanding how things work, as management tools for strategic decision making in production and resource management, and as methods for making informed and objective policy and regulatory decisions.
Part of this cross-cutting issue includes bringing together the numerous initiatives that contribute to the sustainable agriculture agenda. In the aggregate, research will provide the knowledge on which to base environmentally sound, economically rewarding, socially acceptable farming systems that produce high quality food with minimum purchased inputs. Such systems will maintain a high quality of life for family farmers and enhance the viability of rural communities, while recognizing the increasing global interdependencies of agriculture.
Agriculture has many interfaces with urban and suburban dwellers. As populations have shifted from inner cities and rural communities to suburban settings, there is greater physical proximity between places where food is produced and where it is consumed. There is interest and concern about the impact of each neighbor's operations on the other. Urban dwellers use knowledge and technology developed for production agriculture in their home lawns and gardens. Recreation areas such as golf courses, parks, athletic fields, and green space in inner cities are of growing importance and draw heavily on agricultural technology. Urban dwellers and agriculturalists share, and sometimes compete for, the use of common natural resources, such as water. In many states, it is common to find that relatively new ornamental, turf, and related industries have a greater economic impact than traditional agronomic crops.
Approach
Much of the research done for agronomic and horticultural crop production can be applied with little modification to urban settings. There are excellent opportunities to better manage pests and reduce the use of chemicals in lawns and gardens through adoption of strategies developed for production agriculture. Similarly, better management and use of natural resources, such as water in urban settings, is being provided through agriculturally related research. There is also demand for specific research to meet the needs of urban agriculture, including breeding better plants and developing improved management systems. Urban forest ecosystem management research can also help satisfy concerns for water quality, energy conservation, and urban wildlife habitat. There is a need to prevent and mitigate the environmental impact of agricultural operations on communities and cities and to minimize the impact of municipal and industrial wastes and emissions on agriculture.
Relationship to Program Areas
Research on environment and natural resources and on plant systems will be included in this cross-cutting issue in areas that are directly related to plants in the urban environment. There are similar relationships and linkages between research on animal agricultural operations, including animal waste management. There is a substantial research effort directed at strengthening families and communities, contributing to the synergy of the agriculture-rural interface.
Impact
A major opportunity exists to enhance environmental quality through the application of pest management principles to urban lawns and gardens. Additionally, urban trees can play a major role in energy conservation and aesthetics management. Research on using and conserving natural resources can be applied to urban settings. Minimizing the environmental impact of agricultural operations on communities and cities is a very high priority area of research. Major new economic activity, including developing employment in smaller rural areas of the United States, will result from the agricultural industries that provide plants for the urban setting.
Description
The diversity of life forms in any biological system biological diversity or biodiversity is the result of variation in available genetic material. It is manifested in the numbers of species at the community level, and depends on diversity at the landscape level. Diversity of biological components is fundamental to ecosystem stability on a local as well as global scale. Biodiversity provides the genetic storehouse for ensuring survival and growth of the plant and animal industries that provide food and fiber. Several states have developed or are developing comprehensive biodiversity enhancement plans.
Approach
It is critical to increase the understanding of natural and managed ecosystems to enrich biological diversity. Research needs include technologies and management principles for enhancing biodiversity in many systems and maintaining the biotic integrity of others. This involves consideration at the organism, population, ecosystem, and landscape levels. The necessary research involves using a systems perspective directly related to research on sustainable ecosystems. More knowledge is needed on how processes, such as gene flow, hydrology, and nutrient flow, influence biodiversity. Research is also needed on designing landscapes to achieve the appropriate dispersion and management of critical habitats among/within ecosystems to enhance biodiversity.
Relationship to Program Areas
The major initiatives in both plant and animal genetics have very strong objectives directed to understanding, maintaining, storing, enhancing, and using the biological diversity that exists in nature. Tolerance to climatic stress and resistance to pests and disease are examples of how biodiversity has been historically employed. There is growing recognition of the importance of preserving biodiversity for future use in areas not yet recognized as having social or economic importance. Research in the area of environment and natural resources addresses the need to maintain and enhance biodiversity in its natural setting, seeking methods to maintain biodiversity while responsibly using forests, rangelands, and other natural resources in extensive (rather than intensive) operations to produce food and fiber.
Impact
The richness of plant, animal, and microbial life determines the potential for discovering new natural antibiotics and pharmaceuticals, germplasm for food and fiber crops, and genetic material for livestock improvement. Natural pesticides, raw materials for industry and medicine, new fuels, and other beneficial products also will be derived from these resources. Biodiversity also contributes to the continuing quality of life of all people through the aesthetic value of natural resources and their recreational use. Diverse biotic communities produce indispensable ecological benefits such as recycling of wastes, maintaining the atmosphere s chemical composition, and shaping the world s climate. Research to maintain biological diversity at organism, community, and landscape levels will assure that the options for maintaining and using these resources are retained.
Description
Agricultural and forestry production and processing generate products that, after initial use, can either become useful feedstock or inputs for additional products, or they can become bothersome waste, the disposal of which has both economic and environmental consequences. Situations exist in which both agricultural/forestry and urban/industrial wastes can be biologically degraded and nutrients reused on agricultural/forestry lands.
Approach
Research on waste management involves reducing or eliminating the source, reusing or recycling products, and transforming byproducts into useful products.
Relationship to Program Areas
In both plant and animal systems program areas, breeding and management research is aimed at reducing agricultural and forestry wastes. Research on natural resources and environment is focused on using agricultural and forestry lands to recycle nutrients and dispose of agricultural, municipal, and industrial wastes. Research on processing and product development will stress use or reuse of materials derived from primary product development. Studies also will involve establishing the economic basis for waste management options as well as their impact on communities.
Impact
New research can generate options that turn agricultural waste into useful and economically attractive benefits to all elements of the society. It can enhance overall environmental quality and offset the burgeoning problems of waste disposal on a national scale. For instance, a 1 percent reduction in food processing waste translates to more than $1 billion in overall economic activity in the United States. Reducing the 32 million tons of solid waste generated from food packaging by 10 percent would avoid more waste than Chicago generates in a year.
Description
Risk is an inevitable consequence of human activity. Risks should be evaluated in terms of related benefits. Risks related to agriculture and forestry include those resulting from products consumed or used, impacts on the environment, socioeconomic consequences, worker/operator safety, and research and its products.
Risk management includes assessment (risk versus benefit), avoidance, and reduction/mitigation. Previously, most concern about risk has related to human and animal health; however, the issues have broadened and public concerns have become much greater.
Approach
This plan depicts a broad array of research that will contribute directly to risk management. The component parts, however, need to be focused through this cross-cutting issue into a coherent statement of need and direction that pulls together these elements of the plan into a focused set of goals.
There is a need to develop improved methods of objectively and quantitatively assessing the risk versus benefits of new technology, products, processes, and policy or regulatory decisions on human health and safety, the environment, and society in general. This should include new paradigms for assuring safety and quality, building on concepts derived from strategies, such as hazard analysis at critical control points. It also should involve reassessing criteria used to define acceptable risk exposure.
Relationship to Program Areas
Clearly the program area dealing with food safety and nutrition directly contributes to this cross-cutting issue. Food safety considerations now involve all segments of production, processing, storage, marketing, and preparation for consumption. The plant and animal systems programs also propose research that will reduce the risk of both microbiological and chemical contamination of food and fiber products. Research in this area will also provide improved assessment of the risks, costs, and benefits of food with improved nutritional quality. In the program areas on plant and animal systems, processes and products, and economic and social issues, there are interrelated research activities that will evaluate the risks versus benefits of developing and using life forms and products derived using recombinant DNA methodologies. Social sciences research will continue to evaluate the impact of new technology on families, communities, and society in general. Studies at the ecosystem level will provide new assessment of benefit-risk that will be used to make more informed objective judgments on natural resource policy and regulation.
Impact
As the relationships between food, health, environment, and competitiveness of the agricultural and forestry industries become more intertwined, there is a growing need to develop and use better methods to assess the risks versus the benefits of various options and alternatives. An enlightened methodology for doing this will have direct and fundamental impact on every citizens quality of life, maintenance and enhancement of the environment and natural resources, and competitiveness of food and fiber industries.
Description
Consumers are increasingly aware of the importance of wholesome, safe, and nutritious food and are taking their concerns to the market. Factors such as convenience, taste, and portability also have appeared as major variables in the marketplace. Cultural diversity, age, and gender differences in food requirements, as well as a shift of goals from assuring nutritional adequacy to enhancing quality of life have introduced a new set of dynamics into the food and agriculture research agenda. Seeking access to international markets adds still another dimension to the equation. There is increasing demand for food produced with minimum or no artificial chemicals, and market niches are emerging for organic foods and other specialties. Concurrently, advances in biological, physical, and social sciences provide unparalleled opportunities to meet new needs and to create new opportunities.
Approach
Providing the knowledge and technology to define nutritional needs and to develop ways to produce foods to meet consumers' needs and expanding expectations is a goal that pervades most of the program areas described in this plan. In this cross-cutting issue, the relationship established between programs will assure that the pieces of the research portfolio are integrated to meet society's objectives of providing good food at affordable prices.
Relationship to Program Areas
In the program area on nutrition, food safety, and health, research is directed toward writing the prescription for healthy food and meeting consumer expectations. Research in plant and animal systems involves filling the prescription improving the composition, nutritional quality, safety, and consumer appeal of food and food products. Research on new methods of processing, storing, and marketing food is directly linked to consumer expectations and to the use of new products coming from animal and plant systems research. Socioeconomic studies will provide better insight into ethnic, cultural, and other population factors that will help define the marketplace for food. There is an increasing call for research to develop integrated food production systems that involve improved genetics, production methods, processing, packaging, marketing, and preparation.
Impact
By linking the various programs into this cross-cutting issue, it is possible to visualize the broad interrelationships in research and operation required to support the broad system that feeds the nation and makes a major contribution to feeding the world. Throughout the range of research activities, there are opportunities to apply the new biological, physical, and social sciences that are broadly available today. The use of recombinant DNA methods for improving diagnostics and quality tests; improving food and food products; and enhancing taste, safety, convenience, and storage life of foods is an example of the opportunities that can be addressed with modern science and technology.