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RESEARCH CONTRACTS, A CONCEPT FOR FUNDING URGENT NEEDS 



The State Agricultural Experiment Stations are immediately responsive to emergency or 

 short term urgent needs that arise within states. They are closely coupled to policy and 

 decision makers and to clientele from which such needs arise. Often, needs that emerge at 

 the national level have their first recognition and response at the state level. SAESs often 

 have already begun to respond before federal agencies recognize and act. 



Despite this early awareness and responsiveness that comes from grass roots involvement, 

 the SAESs lack a mechanism at the national level that allows the Administration and 

 Congress to provide highly directed resources to deal with short term emergency needs. This 

 proposal recognizes that the Cooperative State Research Service has an established funding 

 mechanism which could also be employed to meet this need. CSRS Special Grants are 

 targeted to specific purposes of recognized national importance and usually involve relatively 

 applied research. 



In this approach, a category of special grants would be established for one-time contracts 

 for highly specific products of research. There would be specifications written for the 

 product, along with a prescribed delivery schedule. The contracts would usually be of 

 relatively short duration, one to two years. The type of research done would vary with the 

 need, but there would be a clearly conceived and achievable product delivered at the end 

 of the contract. While the topic for the research contract would be highly specific, it would 

 deal with national needs and would be awarded competitively. Often research contracts 

 would be awarded to individual institutions, but there may be occasions when consortia of 

 institutions (sometimes including non-agricultural or industrial members) would be more 

 appropriate to assure timely response. 



Identifying the topics of research contracts would often not occur prior to the normal 

 appropriations process. Thus, it would be ideal if an appropriation could be established for 



