Department of Agriculture (U.S.)

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is a component of the executive branch of the U.S. government. Its chief executive is the Secretary of Agriculture, who serves as a member of the Cabinet of the President of the United States. As well as administering price support and nutrition programs, USDA has a wide range of responsibility for funding and regulating science as it applies to the production, distribution, and consumption of agricultural crops and animals, and in some cases to the management of additional renewable resources.

The USDA sponsors scientific research through a number of initiatives, but two programs constitute the largest proportion of sponsored research by far. The Agricultural Research Service (ARS) is a spatially extended government lab with headquarters in Beltsville, Maryland, but with operations in all 50 states as well as in U.S. territories. The Cooperative States Research, Education and Extension Service (CSREES) is an agency that facilitates agricultural research in cooperation with U.S. universities and other nonprofit scientific organizations, but especially with U.S. land-grant universities under a suite of laws that includes the Morrill Act of 1862, the Hatch Act of 1887, and the Smith-Lever Act of 1914.

The USDA is also the home agency for the U.S. Forest Service, an agency whose primary responsibility is the management of forested areas on government lands and fire safety. Research programs at the Forest Service are limited and focus most heavily on agency management responsibilities. They often involve cooperation with other scientific research agencies or organizations. Nanotechnology studies on cellulosic biofuels, for example, might involve the Forest Service, but would very likely rely on the Department of Energy for program oversight.

The USDA has been part of the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) since 2003 (the NNI began in 2001), when $1 million was allocated to the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA). NIFA has been funded at increasing levels since then, with an allocation of $9.9 in 2009 and an estimated allocation of $11.7 million in 2010. The U.S. Forest Service first received NNI funding in 2006, for $2 million. This has also increased annually, with a 2009 allocation of $5.4 million and a similar amount estimated for 2010. Neither is a major agency within the NNI: for instance, the Department of Defense received a $459 million allocation in 2009 and the National Science Foundation received $408.6 million.