By Elizabeth Stulberg
Principal, Lewis-Burke Associates; Member, CAST Strategic Advisory Council
There was a fire. The heat was so intense that the herbicide containers in the nursery greenhouses melted. Firefighters from Johnston County, NC, arrived and put out the fire overnight. They used water from the farm’s irrigation pond, and that same water, now contaminated with herbicides from the melted containers, flowed down a drainage ditch right back into the pond. With a 90 F high in the forecast, the farmer knew he would need water to irrigate his remaining nursery crops, but if he used the pond water, would it kill all his plants? It was Sunday, June 16, 2024 – Father’s Day. He called Bryant Spivey, the head of Extension for Johnston County, and Spivey picked up the phone.
Spivey would have been on his way to church, where he sings in the choir, but he immediately drove to the farm, and, by 7 am, called Dr. Rich Bonanno, then the Director of North Carolina State University Extension. Dr. Bonanno was on a train when he got the call, heading to the last day of the U.S. Open in Pinehurst. He picked up the phone too. They agreed that the simplest solution would have been to get the State Department of Agriculture to test the water. But state labs aren’t open on Sundays, and the farmer needed an answer now.
Instead, Bonanno called in his Extension experts: Dr. Joe Neal, a nursery crop weed specialist, and Dr. Rob Richardson, an aquatic herbicide specialist. Neal was with his daughter in a kayak, and Richardson was playing baseball with his son. They both picked up the phone.
They started asking questions: What were the pesticides? How much leaked out? What is the size of the irrigation pond? And the drainage ditch – was it concrete, soil, full of vegetation? By 11 am, they had an answer for the farmer: he could use the water for most of the plants, but for two types that are especially sensitive to that herbicide, he should truck in water from elsewhere. They solved the problem within a few hours.
This is not a unique situation. Land-grant colleges of agriculture, which exist in every state and territory, employ Extension specialists and researchers, like Bonanno and his colleagues to provide nuanced information to meet the needs of their communities. In most cases, these experts’ salaries are paid for entirely by federal capacity, or “formula” funds, along with a required state match.
Capacity funds are provided by Congress, through the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), to support exactly this kind of local engagement. The money goes directly to each land-grant college of agriculture, which needs to account for every penny. In fact, USDA requires that institutions receiving capacity funds implement an internal merit review and stakeholder input process for their annual distribution of funds; USDA also reviews each institution’s plan of work. Nevertheless, the colleges of agriculture have discretion over the funds’ allocation, and this concerns those who view competitive grants as more effective and efficient. After all, a competitive process involves pre-approval and external peer-review. But imagine the above scenario in the absence of capacity funding. Who does the farmer call? Relying on competitive grants means that faculty only perform work that they have applied, and received funding, to do. There is no one dedicated to picking up the phone in an emergency.
It is easy to see why capacity funds are essential for Extension, but not everyone knows that they are also vital for agriculture research. In February 2026, Dr. Leslie Edgar, the J.R. Simplot Endowed Dean of the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences at the University of Idaho, received a call. There was an anthrax outbreak in Southern Idaho. The state issued a quarantine, which is expensive for the growers to maintain. If the university could figure out how the infection spread, they could keep animals safe and lift the quarantine.
Waiting for a competitive grant was not feasible. Edgar used capacity funding to begin this work right away, and her team, working closely with the state department of agriculture, discovered that animals were becoming infected by anthrax in the soil, a result of the warm, dry winter. With this information, ranchers could move animals to safer pastures, and they now have tools to predict when and where anthrax may emerge in the future.
In addition to funding the research, capacity dollars provided the salary for the soil scientist on staff. Absent capacity funding, there may not have been a faculty member with the right expertise, and, even if there were, the process of applying for and receiving a competitive grant can take months to years, and that’s assuming the grant is funded. Capacity funding was the reason this problem was solved quickly and efficiently, saving what otherwise could have been huge financial losses for local ranchers.
University researchers have multiple responsibilities, including not only running a research program but also teaching and mentorship. This means professors must be judicious with time spent writing proposals. Often, however, the success of a large grant hinges on preliminary work that was supported by a smaller grant, or multiple small grants. Capacity can be used to fund that preliminary work, often marking the difference between a successful agriculture research program and failure.
Dr. Moses Kairo is the Dean of the School of Agricultural and Natural Sciences at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore (UMES), the state’s 1890s land-grant. He understands how important capacity funds are for the professors he works with.
“The 1890s were originally structured as teaching institutions,” he points out. “Faculty here are expected to teach four classes a semester,” which is twice the usual course load. Kairo’s faculty do not have time to write multiple proposals, knowing that many will not be funded.
At UMES, the School of Agriculture and Natural Sciences brings in nearly 80 percent of the university’s grant dollars. Their success relies on capacity to support the preliminary research needed to be competitive in their grant proposals.
“We wouldn’t be where we are with seafood, poultry,” Kairo reports, “if we didn’t have basic capacity funding to support those programs.”
The USDA’s extramural research budget hovers near $1.7 billion. Capacity funding accounts for just less than half of this amount, a value which, in inflation-adjusted dollars, has gone down by 44 percent over the past 46 years even as medical research funding has skyrocketed from $3.4 billion to over $45 billion. This generational investment in medical research has produced incredible results – cancers that had previously been considered a death sentence are now manageable, and who doesn’t want to cure cancer? But the same level of investment and innovation is needed in agriculture, and capacity funding is the secret sauce that brings those innovations to the field and saves farmers money. If USDA had a budget that large, Bonanno, Edgar, and all their land-grant counterparts could support more research faculty, more Extension experts on call, and Kairo’s faculty could write fewer proposals while meeting their teaching requirements. But until our nation invests in agriculture research and Extension what it invests in medical research, the glue holding the agriculture industry together will continue to operate on a shoestring.
About Voices of Agriculture
The Voices of Agriculture series is designed to provide a platform for diverse perspectives on issues, trends, and experiences within the agricultural community. These articles aim to foster dialogue, share insights, and highlight the many voices that contribute to the ongoing conversation about agriculture and its future.
Disclaimer
The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author. They do not necessarily represent the views, positions, or policies of the Council for Agricultural Science and Technology (CAST). CAST provides this space to encourage thoughtful discussion, but does not endorse any specific viewpoints shared in these pieces.
