The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) advanced an agricultural research portfolio that built resilience, boosted yields, and shaped public policies. When the Trump-Vance administration dismantled it last year, their actions created a vacuum that former agency officials hope will be filled by well-intentioned supporters.
Before its closure, USAID’s funding fell into three main buckets. One share went to universities in the United States equipped for advanced agricultural research—some of which were home to the agency’s Feed the Future Innovation Labs, focused on advancing U.S. innovation leadership in agriculture and global food security. Another portion went to international research centers like the CGIAR network and World Vegetable Center, while a smaller chunk supported work in the private sector.
“We viewed our investments in those three groups of partners in the context of a larger research ecosystem,” Jerry Glover, the former Deputy Director of the Center for Agriculture and Lead for Agricultural Research Strategy and Budget at USAID, tells Food Tank. “Most importantly,” he adds, “USAID had a wide range of highly skilled, world-recognized thought leaders.”
Rather than make isolated investments, the agency aimed to complement and fill in the gaps from funding from the National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Agriculture, and other institutions. Research covered everything from crop improvement and horticulture to livestock production and policy issues.
Glover, who managed an annual portfolio of over US$100 million, saw how this work benefited some of the poorest regions of the world, helping farmers and their communities. The goal wasn’t to prescribe a pathway for individual producers, but to create opportunities that they could pursue to increase their yields.
“There’s this ripple effect” when farmers’ productivity and livelihoods grow, Glover explains. “Greater local and regional production also greatly impacts local food prices in the market. When those come down…very poor people benefit the most.”
This shift frees up funds for education and more, “laying the foundation for future improvement,” Glover tells Food Tank. “It’s one of the most robust development theories out there.”
USAID’s investments supported farmers domestically as well—a point often overlooked by critics of the agency. As demand grows abroad, it creates new export markets for U.S.-grown agricultural products. Lessons learned and crop varieties developed also helped prevent problems from becoming crises at home.
As one example, Glover points to research done on sorghum, a crop that many farmers in the Great Plains rely on. Years ago, a pest decimated the crop, costing millions of dollars in losses. With the agency’s support, U.S. researchers worked with partners in Ethiopia to identify a gene that made sorghum strains more resistant to the bug.
The result was a new variety of sorghum that U.S. farmers can grow without worrying as much about pest destruction. This single crop has led to savings of more than US$750 million per year, Glover says.
For decades, investments like these saw broad bipartisan support. When the Trump-Vance administration took office and talk of gutting USAID began, “my first thoughts were that…it wouldn’t be possible to tear it down so quickly,” Glover tells Food Tank. But “they just wiped it out.”
In the year since USAID’s official closure, Glover says that the research ecosystem has been “so disrupted.” The majority of the Innovation Labs closed, funding was cut off, programs ended, and trust with partners has been broken. He believes that there is no replacing the combination of resources and technical capacity USAID was able to offer, but there is still a way forward.
The Food Security Leadership Council, where Glover now serves as a Distinguished Fellow, is providing guidance to bring back investments—including for research and development—that support global food security. He hopes that as funding returns, their recommendations will help researchers and development partners pick up where USAID left off without repeating mistakes or reinventing the wheel.
Glover also sees a glimmer of hope: “I’m confident that we are seeing somewhat of a shift in the traditional donor support in the development arena that could have long-lasting positive impacts.” He also hopes that other governments, including middle-income nations, will support low-income countries and encourage them to increase investments in their agriculture sectors.
“I hope that that vacuum is filled with well-intentioned supporters, and not…by those wanting to extract more from low-income countries.”
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Photo courtesy of Yana Petkova, Unsplash
