Federal Funding for These Ag Research Labs Ended. Now the Search is on for New Support

By Jim Meadows

The Feed the Future Initiative helped connect agricultural research at 17 labs — based at land grant universities throughout the U.S. — with foreign partners in an Obama-era effort to address global hunger.

Now only one of the innovation labs is receiving federal funding.

The Trump administration paused funding to the U.S. Agency for International Development in January, followed by a near-complete dismantling of the agency this spring, including the Feed the Future program.

That left the program’s agricultural researchers to depend on funding from their own universities or private donations, while some hope that Congressional members will step in.

An Anonymous Donation

Work at the University of Illinois’ Soybean Innovation Lab has resumed, although on a reduced scale.

Lab director Peter Goldsmith said that’s thanks to a $1 million anonymous private donation.

“They reached out back at the end of February, and they liked our story,” said Goldsmith. “They liked what we were proposing to do and they put things in position.”

Goldsmith spoke with several media outlets when the funding was paused last winter. The lab had been federally funded through 2027 as part of the Feed the Future program.