Rural Development Down, USDA Research Up in House Subcommittee Budget Action

The House Appropriations Subcommittee for Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration and Related Agencies met last week to mark up the FY11 Agriculture Appropriations bill. In summary,the House's Ag bill is less than one percent lower than the FY10 appropriation levels and 0.1% lower than the President's request.

Programs supporting TBED initiatives, outside of research spending, take a bit of a hit although a proposed move to incorporate more strategic decision making in USDA economic development support is advancing. A sampling of significant items is provided below.

As with the Commerce, State and Justice appropriations bill (the subject of last week's budget update to SSTI members), none of the D.C. analysts and wonks anticipate many, if any, budget bills making it to the President before midterm elections.

For more information, including a list of earmarks, see the 2011 Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration and Related Agencies at: http://appropriations.house.gov/.

HIGHLIGHTS

Rural Development (RD) takes the largest percentage cut within the entire bill, falling to $2.850 billion, $127.7 million less than the FY10 appropriation. A portion of that is offset by increased fees for 502 housing loans. The RD figure is $65.1 million more than the President's request, however. Rural Business Loans & Grants, which has supported a number of TBED programs and activities in smaller communities and rural areas, is appropriated only $157.47 million by the subcommittee, 21 percent less than the President's request and 15
percent less than the FY10 appropriation.

Regional Innovation Initiative
The committee did approve the Administration's novel request to try "clustering" investments by RD and the Agricultural Marketing Service -for a total of $176 million - to "promote a regional outlook in the planning and coordination of rural development programs." While details are not available yet, the language seen to date suggests holding competitions to make larger awards to support more strategic regional development, rather than individual projects.

It seems that approach would redirect funding decisions away from individual state/district offices and into a more fairly competed process nationally - a move the Economic Development Administration is already planning to implement with its grant process this fall. Stay tuned for more details if the idea proceeds.

Research, Education and Extension
Intramural USDA research, conducted by facilities, centers and labs within the Agricultural Research Service, would receive $1.219 billion in FY11. This is $31.3 million less than FY10 but $19.5 million more than the President's request. Earmarks account for $43.898 million of the FY11 appropriation figure.

Extramural research, funded through the National Institute for Food and Agriculture, would increase to $1.357 billion, up $13.8 million from FY10 and $14.2 million from the President's request.

Earmarks
There are only 12 pages of earmarks for the bill. Earmarks offered for presidentially directed spending after the budget request was formally submitted include four items totaling $6.4 million. Among these four items is $2.8 million for the Rural Development program entitled Appropriate Technology Transfer for Rural Areas.

As mentioned $43.898 million is earmarked for intramural research within USDA through 28 individual items. Extramural research is more extensively directed, receiving 115 individual earmarks totalling $83.733 million. Most project titles are too general or cryptic to identify project relevance to TBED. There are a few exceptions, however, that name specific, recognizable TBED organizations and vague titles that seem possibly related, such as "Pilot technology transfer projects" in MS, OK, and WI.

There are no earmarks identified for Rural Development, the area most likely to house TBED items. Instead, the balance of the earmarks are for Animal and Plant Health Inspection and for Natural Resources Conservation Services.