Happy National Ag Week
Happy National Ag Week! Our closest relationship to Earth is through agriculture – it serves as the foundation on which our country and all of civilization has flourished. This week, we celebrate the farmers, ranchers, and producers who work tirelessly to put food on our tables. Thank you for everything you do to cultivate the abundance provided by American agriculture.
But we’re faced with a monumental challenge in the coming years. More food will be consumed in the next 50 years than in the last 7,000 years. We will need to feed nearly 10 billion people by 2050 and we must do this with the same about or diminishing land while protecting our national resources.
Science is accelerating at breakneck speed. Our ability to couple new tech with what we rapidly discover about living things means that the agricultural enterprise is benefiting so rapidly from research that it is truly breathtaking. I truly believe there is no better time to be engaged in agricultural science and research.
America’s support of food and agriculture research has helped us become the world’s leader in agriculture production, but public investment in ag science is declining. Now, more than ever, we need food and agriculture research to help farmers put food on our tables.
At FFAR, we believe that public-private partnerships will be essential to spur the innovation we need to feed the world. We must continue to bring together the best and brightest scientists to address challenges in food and agriculture – plus provide them the support they need to make the discoveries that will accelerate innovation.
Let’s work together to support agriculture research that spurs innovation and leads us to a future where we all have access to healthy, nourishing food produced by thriving American farms.
About the Author
Dr. Sally Rockey became the inaugural Executive Director of the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research (FFAR) in September 2015. Prior to this role, Dr. Rockey was a leader in Federal research, overseeing the operations of the extramural programs in both agriculture and biomedicine. She spent 19 years with the U.S. Department of Agriculture before taking on the extramural research program at the National Institutes of Health. As Deputy Director for Extramural Research, Dr. Rockey led groundbreaking initiatives and activities that have and will have a lasting positive impact on the research community. Dr. Rockey received her Ph.D. in Entomology from the Ohio State University.