Dairy Key to USDA Ag Innovation Agenda Research Strategy
February 2, 2021
USDA released on Jan. 12 the U.S. Agriculture Innovation Strategy Directional Vision for Research summary and dashboard that will help to guide future research decisions within USDA. The strategy synthesizes information USDA collected as part of the public engagement in 2020 on research priorities under the Agriculture Innovation Agenda.
NMPF, Newtrient LLC, and the Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy submitted a series of comments to USDA on their request for comments on the Ag Innovation Agenda. These wide-ranging comments helped USDA put forth a clear and comprehensive research strategy specific for the U.S. dairy industry under four aspirational goals:
- Production Aspirational Goal: Increase agricultural production by optimizing yield and/or quality with higher input use efficiency;
- Production Capability Aspirational Goal: Increase agricultural production capabilities of soil, water, and air by developing and implementing sustainable farming tools and practices;
- Market Expansion and Diversity Aspirational Goal: Increase market diversity and product utility of the farming system to expand value, reach, and resiliency; and
- Data Aspirational Goal: Standardize, align, and integrate agricultural research and operational data to enable and energize a broad informatics ecosystem to drive tomorrow’s agricultural operations and state and federal programs.