Editor’s Note: This interview first appeared in Path Finders, an email newsletter from the Daily Yonder. Each week, Path Finders features a Q&A with a rural thinker, creator, or doer. Like what you see here? You can join the mailing list at the bottom of this article and receive more conversations like this in your inbox each week.
Anna Nelson’s resume is impressive, to say the least. Prior to her current role as executive director of the non-profit Food Security Leadership Council, she was the deputy special envoy for global food security in the U.S. Department of State, and before that, a senior advisor to the Biden administration on climate and food security strategies. Nelson knows a lot about what it takes to build a stronger food system, both nationally and globally.
It’s this expertise that went into the Food Security Leadership Council’s recent report on the need for more U.S.-driven agriculture research and development (R&D), and the ways the federal government is – and more critically, is not – investing in R&D and innovation.
Enjoy our conversation about why this work is important, below.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Claire Carlson, The Daily Yonder: Please introduce yourself and tell me a bit about the Food Security Leadership Council.
Anna Nelson: I’m the executive director of the Food Security Leadership Council. Previous to that, I was a civil servant in the State Department and in the Defense Department. My last role was as the Deputy Special Envoy for Global Food Security.
We launched the Food Security Leadership Council in July of last year, and our goal is to come up with a new path forward for the U.S. government’s role in strengthening global food security. Our premise is that global food security should be a national level goal for the U.S. government because there are so many ramifications for our own prosperity and for the prosperity of the world.
DY: What do you think are the major food security issues that the U.S. faces today?
AN: So our focus is on global food security, and we take a long view. We’re looking at all the tools that the U.S. government has in its toolbox. I think the most well-known is foreign assistance, the types of activities that the United States Agency for International Development
(USAID) used to do, both emergency relief and long-term development, but also our trade policy and our multilateral policy. Even how we provide public data on key things that matter for agriculture and markets. So we’re looking across all of those areas to see if we really want to prioritize global food security, what can the U.S. government do to help get us there?
DY: Segueing into your recent report, The Call to Rebuild U.S. Leadership in Food and Agricultural Research & Development (R&D): What prompted writing this report now, and what were the key takeaways?
AN: The big takeaway is we need to reinvest in agricultural research and innovation. The U.S. has been a leader in this field for decades, but we aren’t investing like it anymore. And that’s been a trajectory over many years. And agricultural R&D really is an incredibly powerful tool that can advance so many of our goals. It matters for global food security. It matters for natural resources. It matters for economies, both here and abroad. There are just so many different things that agricultural innovation can be optimized to advance, that it would be remiss of us to not lean into that as a path to tackle so many of our shared challenges.
So why now? Part of it is, why not now? But also because the numbers are disappointing at a time where innovation could make such a big difference, as I mentioned, we’re not investing like it. [Editor’s note: the U.S. share of global public agricultural R&D spending dropped from 20.2% in 1960 to 11.5% by 2011.] And others around the world are recognizing that it is a powerful tool and they are investing. So the United States has sort of lost its position as a leader in U.S. public investment in agricultural R&D, and we want to make sure that we maintain our edge over the long-term.
DY: Can you provide some specific examples for what the U.S. has been good at in terms of innovation and R&D?
AN: I think some of the most well-known ones are improved crop varieties that are higher yield or that are drought resilient or pest resistant, but it goes much beyond that. And innovations are not always super high-tech. They can be different soil management practices or water management practices. Anything that benefits from research and trying new things fits into the bucket of agricultural innovation. It’s really just about doing things in a better way and trying new approaches.
DY: Daily Yonder focuses on rural communities. Of course, there’s a lot of farmland in rural areas, but I’m curious about your perspective on how rural America can uniquely benefit from investments in this.
AN: Yeah, absolutely. I think agricultural innovation is so powerful because it can have global impact, but also really concrete impact locally. And publicly funded innovation is particularly important in that regard because the public gets to decide what its priorities are for innovation, whereas private investment in innovation generally would prioritize a profit. In publicly funded innovation and research and development, we can choose.
So we can look at what innovations are particularly important for small farmers, and what innovations are particularly important for improving air and water quality in our agricultural systems. What innovations are particularly important for making sure that we can produce nutritious foods at reasonable prices? I mean, these are outcomes that we get to prioritize and public funding can make sure that we’re advancing science and practice in those spaces.
DY: I’m wondering about the future of all of this. Do you see any chance of these investments happening under the Trump administration, given the disinvestment in a lot of research, and USDA staff cuts? What’s the feasibility?
AN: That’s the $100 billion question. We’re calling for $100 billion over 10 years in new investments in agricultural R&D, which would be more or less a tripling of the annual budget for 10 years. Our goal now is to change the conversation, or more accurately, expand the conversation to make the point that agricultural R&D is not just an agriculture issue. It’s an everyone issue. It affects all the things that people care about, including our food, which is one thing that we all obviously share. We want to start expanding that conversation, making the point that this is something that we all need to care about and focus on. Of course, we hope that that will lead to action over a shorter rather than longer timeline, but we’re prepared to take the time it needs.
This interview first appeared in Path Finders, a weekly email newsletter from the Daily Yonder. Each Monday, Path Finders features a Q&A with a rural thinker, creator, or doer. Join the mailing list today, to have these illuminating conversations delivered straight to your inbox.
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The post Q&A: Anna Nelson on Food Security at Home and Abroad appeared first on The Daily Yonder.
