37 



I am going to try to be economic in this period of being conscious 

 of time and budget deficits and not take 10 minutes and just make 

 a few observations so that you will have the benefit of comments 

 from my colleagues on the panel. 



It is obvious that we are discussing something that is terribly im- 

 portant to the national interest, and that is the capability of our 

 agricultural sciences to keep America competitive in agricultural 

 research, which is one of the fundamental things that has worked 

 very well for our Nation and the world. We discuss facilities and 

 buildings not because they are an end in and of themselves, but be- 

 cause they are a means toward an end. 



I am sorry that Mr. Gunderson had to leave. The comment I 

 would make to Mr. Gunderson — which I believe is implicit in the 

 testimony of my association and its colleges and universities — is 

 that you cannot have one without the other. You cannot have the 

 kind of hard-hitting, competitive research that has been the hall- 

 mark of our agriculturally involved universities without research 

 support, but you can't have it if you don't have the instruments, 

 the buildings, and the facilities to deliver it. And you need to have 

 both. 



Indeed, what has happened in recent years has been a very 

 heavy erosion of support, regardless of the source — whether Fed- 

 eral or State — for facilities in which many university leaders and 

 researchers have simply had to count on maintaining and support- 

 ing their facilities so that they could maintain as much research ac- 

 tivity as possible. 



What is clearly needed is a research program. The association 

 that I represent feels very strongly that there has to be a better 

 way to deal with this — and this has already come out in the col- 

 loquy and the comments that have been exchanged, Mr. Chairman, 

 by you, Mr. Brown, and others. We are well aware of the fact that 

 a lot of proposals that may have merit in some respects are funded 

 that are only vaguely related to agriculture and that are competing 

 with mainstream proposals that do speak to national priorities. 



About 2 years ago, my association endorsed a proposal for Fed- 

 eral investment in agricultural research facihties. It was based on 

 recommendations from the USDA and an association committee of 

 distinguished scholars and administrators. Essentially, it would 

 have established a competitive grants program under the authority 

 of the 1963 Research Facihties Act, and it called for collaborative 

 priority setting involving NASULGC, my association. Congress, 

 and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. 



The experiment station directors, through their committee on or- 

 ganization and policy, now have put in place a mechanism, cer- 

 tainly one way to help identify and set the national strategic re- 

 search priorities for land-grant universities in their relationship 

 with USDA and then of course, in effect, with Congress. It is based 

 on consensus on the part of the users and performers of research. 



I personally believe that it is absolutely doable to put in place, 

 whatever the fine print would be, a mechanism that would enable 

 us to set up a competitive research facilities program that spoke to 

 national priorities and needs and interests in a fashion that pro- 

 vided appropriate distribution of talents throughout the Nation, 



