Supporting Organic Agriculture in USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA)

The purpose of this article is to briefly describe how NIFA’s research, teaching, and extension investments in the three programs focusing on organic agriculture were apportioned to geographic areas, agricultural commodities, and topics from 2002-2011. NIFA investments in other competitive and noncompetitive programs supplement this funding to some extent. However, most NIFA organic agriculture funding (Fig. 1) can be traced to the Organic Transitions Program (ORG), created by the 1998 farm bill and originally funded at $500,000 annually; and the Organic Agriculture Research and Extension Initiative (OREI), created by the 2002 farm bill and originally funded at $3 million yearly. In 2009, ORG funds were combined with funds from another NIFA program, the Integrated Water Quality Program (IOWQP), to focus on environmental services. In 2009, funding for OREI increased to $18 million, followed by funding of almost $20 million from 2010 through 2012. ORG funding changed in 2010 to $5 million and then to $4 million in 2011 and 2012. IOWQP was only offered in 2009, but the environmental services focus continued in ORG and was removed from OREI in 2011 and 2012.