61 



tor with the Federal dollars in either of those, or are they relatively 

 the same? 



Mr. Fischer. If I xinderstand your question correctly, Mr. Dooley, 

 I believe your question is, is there an advantage to partnering with 

 one versus the other? 



Mr. Dooley. Right. Does one lend itself better than another? 



Mr. Fischer. Right now in the transition that we are moving in 

 in ag research, we are building those linkages with all of them, and 

 I think that is the ultimate strength and it's going to build the syn- 

 ergism for the research that we need to be about. 



Mr. Dooley. If we decided that we were going to back off and 

 reallocate some of the moneys that are currently being allocated 

 under the earmarked portion of it into the formula or otherwise, 

 what would be your expectation in terms of the distribution of the 

 allocation of those funds? Would it have a significant impact na- 

 tionwide? 



Mr. Fischer. Yes. The system, as was pointed out in the pre- 

 vious studies, is quite underfunded, and that's one of the reasons 

 we get the very significant returns on investments that was men- 

 tioned by Dr. Offutt this morning. I think there are some opportu- 

 nities for us to work with this committee in looking at some options 

 for additional investment in this system and how that can be most 

 effective. 



Mr. Dooley. If we had the same amoimt of dollars we presently 

 have to be allocated to research, I guess my concern would be the 

 shift fi*om the — let's say we wiped out the earmark grants alto- 

 gether or the funding. What should we expect from this committee 

 in terms of its impact fi*om a regional perspective, an institution 

 perspective, basically on ag research? What would be its impact if 

 we went to a totally competitive allocation? 



Mr. Fischer. That's difficult for me to summarize or to come up 

 with — it would be 100 percent speculation on my part at this time. 

 I don't want to give you the impression that some of the work 

 that's in the earmarks is not good quality research and that it is 

 needed efforts. In fact, I would venture to say that perhaps part of 

 the reason they're there is it speaks to the need for the fimds in 

 ag research. There is the option that we discussed somewhat this 

 morning about the contract research and how it could impact some 

 of the pressing needs that are in our system that we cannot antici- 

 pate when they're coming in fi*ont of us and they cannot go through 

 a normal budgeting legislative process. 



I would be willing to follow up more on this with a little addi- 

 tional time to give you some more perspective fi*om the background. 



Mr. Dooley. Dr. Mortensen, in your testimony, you commented 

 that we've got to maintain our commitment to one of the missions 

 of our institutions as far as on the education component. Is there 

 something about the way that we're allocating our dollars for ag re- 

 search now that is detracting fi*om the ability to meet the edu- 

 cational mission of our institutions? 



Mr. Mortensen. No, I did not intend to imply that. It's just that 

 the higher education budget is very modest when you look at the 

 total USDA budget. For instance, this fiscal year it's less than $20 

 milhon. 



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