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environment through significant expansion of competitive research 

 grants. The Board on Agriculture proposal — which became the 

 National Research Initiative (MRI) — recommended new monies for 

 agricultural research at the level of $500 million annually, 

 distributed among six broad program areas: plant systems; animal 

 systems; nutrition, food quality, and health; natural resources 

 and the environment; engineering, products, and processes; and 

 markets, trade, and policy. Authorization for the full $500 

 million program was included in the 1990 farm bill. 



The Board argued that implementation of the NRI would ensure 

 the continued benefits of high return to investment in 

 agricultural research, encourage the participation of the entire 

 science community in agricultural work, provide flexibility and 

 response to utilize new scientific discoveries and technologies 

 for agriculture, and advance U.S. agriculture while contributing 

 advances in relevant scientific fields, such as biomedicine and 

 ecology. The hope was that, when fully funded, the NRI would 

 make grants of larger size and duration than under the then 

 existing competitive grants program within USDA. Specifically, 

 those grants would be made as four types: (1) to individual 

 principal investigators, (2) to multidisciplinary teams working 

 on basic research, (3) to mission-linked multidisciplinary teams, 

 and (4) to institutions and individuals to strengthen the U.S. 

 research capacity. 



The Board's proposal for enlarging the research commitment 

 for agriculture through competitive grants was endorsed by the 

 U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). The Bush Administration 

 subsequently proposed to the Congress that the existing 

 competitive research grants program be expanded by $50 million 

 annually. And, the Congress responded with an increase in the 

 appropriation from about $43 million to $73 million. The next 

 year, in FY1992, the NRI funding level was set at $97.5 million. 



Considered against the backdrop of an increasingly 

 constrained federal budget allocation for all agricultural 

 programs, the NRI has enjoyed remarkable success. By FY1993, 

 however, the strictures of the 1990 budget summit were being 

 felt; NRI funding stalled at the previous year's level of $97.5 

 million. Vfhile all six categories received some measure of 

 funding by FY1992, the NRI is still some way from its overall 

 goal and from being able to fulfill the Board's hope that 

 individual grants would average $100,000 per year (compared with 

 the current average $50,000) and last longer (for three to five 

 years, compared with the current average one to two years) ; and 

 that appropriate levels of support would be available for the six 

 program areas and four types of grants. 



As argued by the Board in Investing in Research: A Proposal 

 to Strengthen the Agricultural. Food, and Environmental System 

 (National Academy Press, 1989) , the competitive grant is the 



