Timothy Mulderrig, originally of Middletown, is a Ph.D. student at Cornell University, studying plant breeding and genetics.
Believe me when I say, graduate school is a humbling experience.
When I graduated from the University of Delaware in 2022, I was on top of the world. I had just defended my undergraduate thesis, had received a degree with distinction and had packed up my apartment to move to Washington, D.C., for a summer job. It felt like my dreams were becoming reality. Best of all, that fall, I would move to Ithaca, New York, to start my Ph.D. program in plant breeding and genetics, hoping to develop wheat varieties to fight food insecurity in the U.S. and abroad. This kid from Middletown was well on his way to becoming the next Norman Borlaug.
Typically, in the agricultural sciences, a Ph.D. program lasts about five years. Initially, that seemed like a long time, a cruel sentencing reserved for those who aren’t on their games. Quickly, I learned, however, that crop variety development takes many years and lots of resources. Farming comes at great financial risk, so farmers must only plant seeds that they have extreme confidence in. I see this firsthand in a wheat-breeding lab, since an estimated 65% of the acreage of wheat grown in the U.S. is from varieties developed in public breeding programs. This results in years of painstaking crossing, trait identification, genetic characterization, data analysis and field evaluation, typically done by graduate students at land-grant universities, to ensure that farmers get a reliable and desirable product.
When I entered this program, to say I was overconfident would be an understatement. Initially, I had dreams of seeing my name on roadside signs next to fields of the healthiest wheat you had ever seen. Now, I am hyperaware of the plethora of necessary skills and knowledge it takes to make an impact in crop development research. I hope that, by the end of my program, I will have been able to create a few steps in the right direction for wheat breeding.
But even this humble goal is coming under fire. Recent proposed budget cuts from federal science-funding agencies and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, as well as the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Feed the Future Innovation Labs, have rapidly dismantled the infrastructure necessary for the United States to remain the global leader in agriculture. Dozens of colleagues I know were fired overnight, due to federal workforce reduction efforts. These researchers worked on a variety of essential projects for Delaware farmers: testing for avian influenza, monitoring the transmission of wheat fungal pathogens, evaluating treatment approaches for managing nematode infestation in potato fields, developing computational and genetic tools to increase the efficiency of soybean breeding. Administrative staff were also released, creating insurmountable backlogs to the point where researchers couldn’t access accounts to pay employees or get basic supplies needed to operate.
Make no mistake: Federal spending must be intentional, efficient and deliberate; science thrives in an ecosystem like that. Yet there is huge bang for the taxpayer’s buck with agricultural research. The Department of Agriculture reported that, between 1900 and 2011, for every dollar invested in public sector agriculture research in the U.S., an average of $20 of benefit was spurred in the economy. Despite this seemingly clear investment opportunity, our rates of research-and-development investment in agriculture lagged behind those of our major national trade competitors. Why do we view funding research as an inefficient use of federal monies?
Sometimes with R&D, it is not simple to identify rapid return on investment. By nature, agricultural research requires multiple years to reach significant results, making the duration of a project an inadequate indicator of efficiency. Recent funding cuts and freezes have felt like the opposite of efficiency, as essential research grants needed for human health and flourishing have been hit in the cross fire of the war on misaligned spending with partisan budget priorities. To us Delawareans, who live in a state where farming is the primary industry, agricultural science cannot afford to be partisan. The damage has already been done; even though some initial firings and grant freezes are being reversed due to various judicial rulings, it might be too little too late for some labs to recover. With an environment in flux and pests that rapidly adapt to prey on vulnerable crops, valuable time has already been lost that was needed to gather data for upcoming cultivar releases. I fear for the downstream impacts this will have on farmers come harvest.
I am sad to confess that the blind optimism I once held is being replaced with a sense of jaded realism. Without consistent and reliable funding in science that matters, Delawareans, Americans and humanity will be at risk. As I approach the end of my Ph.D. program, I have never felt more unsure of the future of science. My convictions about the necessity of plant-breeding research have never waned, but my prognosis about the ability for a scientist to make meaningful progress in this projected funding landscape is bleak. It is a crucial time for Delawareans to advocate for the programs and research that matter to us! Consider reaching out to your state and national legislative representatives to express your desire to continue supporting programs such as the Delaware Cooperative Extension and U.S. Department of Agriculture grants and loans, as well as National Institute of Food and Agriculture and U.S. National Science Foundation research-funding channels.
Science can be a marathon, which can be grueling, but we cannot afford to forfeit this race.
Reader reactions, pro or con, are welcomed at civiltalk@iniusa.org.
