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research efforts. They have stretched available resources to transparent thinness, sometimes 

 cutting telephone service and the purchase of pens and pencils, as well as gifting back a 

 portion of their own income, in order to sustain their projects. AU of this is done in order to 

 add one more small increment to the base of knowledge that the rest of us might use to make 

 our businesses more competitive, our communities more liveable and our nation's food and 

 agriculture system more viable. Our failure to adequately support their efforts is a tragically 

 cynical response to a looming national crisis. 



The historic obligation of the states to provide and maintain the buildings, including research 

 facilities, at their land-grant colleges and universities is clear. However, their ability to fulfill 

 that obligation has been heavily impacted by rapidly escalating mandated expenditures 

 imposed by the federal government With the fiscal restructuring now underway at the 

 federal level, a state-federal partnership program ought to be struck to provide both a 

 remedial and long-term proactive response to a deteriorating agricultural research 

 infrastructure at our nation's land-grant institutions. 



An organized national approach, including a peer review process as proposed by the special 

 USDA/NASULGC committee, makes great sense to me. That proposal which 1 have 

 reviewed in its fundamental outline aims to create a competitive grants program under 

 authority of the Research Facilities Act of 1963 as amended, and includes a collaborative 

 priority-setting effort involving NASULGC, the USDA and the Congress. I offer my 

 endorsement of such a plan, at least in principle, in order that we might set a course for the 

 survival and superiority of American agriculture. The details of that plan are available from 

 NASULGC and 1 know its president. Dr. C. Peter Magrath, would be happy to discuss them 

 with you. 



For all of the problems our country faces, most of which are catalogued daily in the popular 

 press, this relatively unnoticed point of decay concerns me more than most The long-term 

 ramifications of allowing our agricultural research infrastructure to coll^se leads to the most 

 certain downtrend in our society that I can imagine. I very much appreciate this 

 subcommittee's attention to the issue and hope it leads to prompt action. 



Thank you. 



