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The State Department laid out its new approach for funding U.S. ag research when it recently put out an appeal for new Feed the Future grants. Now, a renewed focus on prosperity within the Western Hemisphere has some former labs rethinking their applications.
The State Department announced Feb. 20 that it is taking applications for up to seven Feed the Future innovation lab grants, worth a total of $64 million. The program, which used to be administered by the U.S. Agency for International Development, had 17 labs running when President Donald Trump began his second term. All but one saw their funding pulled last year when the administration shuttered USAID and issued stop work orders.
The State Department notice outlines an “America First” approach to investments in agricultural research. Accordingly, grant applicants are invited to submit applications that “directly benefit American safety, strength, and prosperity, especially in our own hemisphere,” as well as projects committed to tackling the “root causes” of poverty and hunger.
“It's unabashed in its declaration to make sure that if we are using American dollars, there has to be a return on that investment to America,” said David Hughes, a global food security professor at Penn State University who ran an innovation lab focused on current and emerging threats to crops. “It's a very blatant ‘America First,’ unapologetic stance.”
Such an approach, Hughes said, will require interested universities to structure their applications in such a way as to demonstrate the potential value for American agriculture.
David Hughes (LinkedIn photo)Hughes’ lab, which was among those that saw its government funding axed last year, was doing research in countries including Burkina Faso, Kenya, Nepal and Uganda. He plans to apply for a new grant, he told Agri-Pulse in an interview, and is already thinking about how to directly tie threats in these emerging markets to U.S. profitability.
Hershey Chocolate Co. is based in Pennsylvania, for example, and chocolate is sourced from West Africa.
“So, yes. You should be working in Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire,” he said.
Similarly, he said “pests and diseases do not respect geographical boundaries.” The Trump administration may be focused on protecting U.S. crops and Western hemisphere supply chains, but threats to coffee growth in South America can emerge in West African crops and travel on the jet stream.
“These things are connected,” Hughes said. “It's our job as scientists to put forward that argument.”
Missing research?
Many of the 16 projects that lost funding last year were tied to specific commodities. A lab at the University of Illinois was looking at soybeans, while another in Georgia studied peanuts and a University of Florida lab examined livestock systems.
Those labs can trace a clear link between their research and the U.S. industries that stand to benefit and may have a better chance at securing funding, analysts said.
Michael Carter ran a lab focused on markets, risk and resilience out of the University of California, Davis. But he sees no place for his work in the new Feed the Future ecosystem.
Without a direct commodity focus or clear, quantifiable dollar returns to U.S. agriculture, Carter told Agri-Pulse in an interview that he doesn’t intend to apply for any of the new funding.
The notice, Carter said, appeared to be a revival of the approach to ag research funding that was in place before the Feed the Future Initiative launched in 2010.
“We were typically asked, ‘What have you done for U.S. farmers lately?’” Carter said. But the Feed the Future Initiative at USAID, Carter argued, became “more interested in agricultural development as an important thing in its own right in lower-income countries.”
“I don't think that's what they're interested in doing at this time,” Carter said.
Carter said that he is proud of his research under the Feed the Future umbrella, which he said contributed to the economic stability of emerging economies. Research of this nature benefits the U.S. more indirectly through reduced migration from unstable nations, he said. “It's not the same thing as a sharp, immediate commercial interest for soybean farmers in Illinois,” Carter said.
Chelsea Marcho, who worked on the labs at USAID and is now a senior director for research and policy at the Food Security Leadership Council, is concerned the refocusing of the program could lead to less Africa-focused research.
The region, she argued, is particularly important for global food security.
“If we're going back to the idea of ultimately trying to avoid humanitarian assistance,” she said, economic, agriculture-led growth “is also a way to do that.”
University ‘Hunger Games’
Congress allocated $72 million in fiscal 2025 funding to the Feed the Future program. Some $8 million of that went to the Climate Resilient Cereals Innovation Lab at Kansas State University – which was spared from the cuts last year.
The remaining $64 million will fund up to seven additional labs.
Hughes said the innovation lab heads were in regular contact last year after their funding was axed but described a “Hunger Games” mentality that has emerged more recently. Many of the 16 labs that saw their funds dry up could now be competing for just seven or fewer grants.
There were also several additional labs that were supposed to come online before the closure of USAID last year that could also be in contention.
Congress appropriated another $72 million in funding for the innovation labs in FY26.
Accordingly, Marcus Glassman, director of governmental affairs for agriculture and international development at the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, said he is hoping that there will be additional grants offered in the coming months and years ahead to bring the number of labs closer to the original 17.
It’s not clear, however, how quickly some of the labs could restart their research and rebuild operations in the event that they receive some of the new funding.
Some researchers, like Hughes, had other funding sources to protect their work from being idled. Hughes founded the private company, PlantVillage+, a few months before USAID was shuttered. His work on pest protection was able to continue through that vehicle.
Some of the labs also received philanthropic donations, which allowed them to continue their work, Glassman said.
At least one former lab director Agri-Pulse reached out to has moved on from the university.
“It's going to be a ramp-up process,” Marcho said. Some labs have lost entire staff.
The lost funding also contributed to universities reducing the number of graduate students they have taken on over the last year, Carter said. At UC Davis, the Ph.D. program is less than half the size of the previous year, Carter said, which he attributed to uncertainty around funding sources, including Feed the Future.
Whether the “America First” approach also extends to Feed the Future lab researchers is also something of an open question, Marcho said. One of the labs’ assets, Marcho said, was that they hired top international talent which, when they returned to their native countries, would bring U.S. research principles with them and strengthen universities’ relationships across the globe.
Marcho is hoping that extensive international hiring will continue.
She pointed out that even with the potential challenges in rebuilding, universities will not be starting from scratch.
“Our U.S. university research system is incredibly strong and resilient,” she said. The hope is that universities “will be able to put together plans that will not lose out on the momentum that we had with the previous innovation labs and build something good.”
