Location: Animal Production and Protection
Project Number: 0208-32000-001-098-S
Project Type: Non-Assistance Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Sep 15, 2025
End Date: Sep 14, 2027
Objective:
United States Department of Agriculture – Agricultural Research Service (USDA ARS) animal and aquaculture research addresses high impact existing and emerging disease threats, essential food safety challenges from the ‘farm-to-fork’, the impact of vectors and pests (insects, feral populations, wildlife, etc.), and biological science disciplines (genetics, nutrition, reproduction, management) that reflect incremental improvements in efficiency and welfare. Together, these multi-disciplinary, interactive approaches support American farmer and rancher profitability and sustainability, enhance rural economies, improve ecosystem services, and provide high-quality, safe, affordable food for U.S. citizens.
USDA ARS research programs in animal and aquaculture health, production, and safety seek to establish a framework for economic analyses and assessments that evaluate and quantify the impact of ARS congressionally funded research. This capability will provide enhanced guidance on the usefulness of USDA ARS-developed tools and capabilities, and will drive further innovation, refinement, and agility to meet American agricultural needs. Capturing economic impacts will improve research prioritization, structure scientific investment in personnel and infrastructure capital, provide stakeholders with knowledge and information that supports improved public and private decision making, and improve scientific innovation and agility. The cooperator has a unique capacity within their Agricultural Economics department that can assist ARS in this effort.
In collaboration between the Cooperator and USDA ARS the agreement objectives are: 1) Establish a working group of livestock and aquaculture health, production, and economics experts from USDA ARS and USDA Agencies, the Cooperator and other institutions to establish economic approaches that will capture the value of livestock, poultry, aquaculture, entomology, and food safety research at the producer, industry, and national levels. 2) Utilize new and existing knowledge, coupled in AI-based Large Language Models, to outline gaps in current knowledge, challenges to be addressed, and build economic models to measure, monitor, and report economic impacts of the research. 3) Identify pilot projects and expertise to support USDA ARS research program leaders with economic analyses that inform their research direction, help establish research priorities, and enable improved quantification of economic outcomes of funded research.
Approach:
The Cooperator maintains agricultural economics expertise, and inter-university collaborations with additional subject matter experts, that will facilitate the establishment of a research working group to address the economic assessment and return on investment of research funding within the United States Department of Agriculture - Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS), affiliated USDA Agencies, and land-grant institutions. The approach will include the development of facilitated workshops between USDA-ARS and Cooperator directed subject matter expertise, use of Artificial Intelligence - Large Learning Model-supported economic modeling for specific discipline- and program-area research activities, and provision of subject matter expertise access in support of individual program leaders as they develop research strategy and assess research value to U.S. animal industries at the farm, industry, and national scale.