In food crisis, US may cut support for ag research

[struggle4progress]

Thu Apr 24, 2008 4:56pm EDT

By Missy Ryan

WASHINGTON, April 24 (Reuters) - The United States may slash support for pioneering agriculture research this year, just as surging food prices and supply concerns prompt increasingly urgent calls for a revolution in global farm productivity.

A network of premier research centers, which helped drive the first Green Revolution in the 1960s, which transformed crop yields and saved millions from starvation, is predicting a "major reduction" in some of its work if Washington follows through with plans to cut core support by 75 percent.

The cut in fiscal 2008 from the centers' biggest funder "seems to be a done deal," said Ren Wang, director of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, which includes 15 centers around the globe.

That move, he said, would undercut research aiming to boost rice yields, potentially feeding another 180 million poor people in Asia, to make rice and beans more nutritious, or to improve irrigation in the tropics ...

http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSN24291968

[notesdev]

1. China has our dollars

and rice is particularly important to them. They're the ones who should be sponsoring this research. They want to be a major power, it's time they stepped up to the plate with some cash. We're, uh, a little busy with an economic meltdown of our own at the moment.

[struggle4progress]

2. Billions for a pointless war, nothing for food