State Should Grant WSU Fund Request
Neglected while state policy makers trimmed budgets and built campuses to educate young people from the cities, agricultural research cannot be shortchanged any longer.
Today, agriculture is in trouble. This historic industry, still a cornerstone of the Northwest’s economy, has taken a beating from every conceivable direction: Asian economic woes cut demand from buyers at the same time ideal weather produced big yields. Commodity prices have fallen to levels that make profit impossible. Alarming outbreaks of food-borne disease - from E. coli to lethal forms of salmonella - have cast a shadow over meat products. Regulators are phasing out pesticides essential to many of the region’s crops and are scrutinizing dairy farms for water pollution.
Repeatedly in decades past, agricultural research has helped farms survive such challenges.
In all probability, science can do so again. But it can do so only if legislators provide some funds instead of yet another call for yet another round of cutbacks.
Accordingly, Washington State University has, for the first time in eight years, requested a major increase in agricultural research funding. The university hopes the governor and Legislature will add $7.5 million to its $64 million agricultural research budget for the two-year funding cycle that begins next July.
That’s a sizeable increase, as the university knows. The state has a long list of competing priorities, not least of which is increasing capacity for undergraduate instruction. However, the state has spent several years boosting undergraduate capacity while research funding stagnated. Federal research funding also has declined.
As a result, over the past five years WSU’s College of Agriculture had to cut 35 full-time faculty slots, says its dean, James Zuiches.
That makes it harder for WSU scientists to repeat their past contributions, like the disease-resistent wheat varieties that shave millions from farmers’ costs.
Working with farm groups, WSU has drafted a detailed plan for the $7.5 million. It would hire microbiologists to find ways to make meat products safer. It would hire scientists to develop safe, nonchemical treatments to replace pesticides soon to be lost by many valuable commodities, from apples to potatoes. It would hire scientists to develop ways to grow grain at lower cost and to perfect dryland crops more marketable than wheat.
WSU scientists have a long record of fielding innovations that made farming safer, more efficient, more productive and economically viable. A $7.5 million appropriation is a small price to pay to keep this indispensable industry strong.