All of Michigan State University’s USAID funding programs have been terminated by the federal government, resulting in more than $20 million in funding loss. This includes nine direct programs, as well as five flow-through programs. The loss in funding has ended programs across campus — including the Feed the Future Global Biotech Potato Partnership, a project launched in 2022 and tasked with boosting potato production across the globe.
The leader of this project has been David Douches, a professor in the MSU Department of Plant, Soil and Microbial Sciences at the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources. Douches came to Michigan — a significant potato-producing state — and MSU, specifically, in the late 1980s to lead the Potato Reading and Genetics Program. Throughout his time at MSU, Douches has released over 20 potato varieties, which have greatly impacted U.S. potato growers. Over time, his work and expertise in potato breeding and genetics shifted to an international level, including dedicating 30 years to leading global research on improved potato varieties across Central and South America, Africa, China, Kyrgyzstan, Bangladesh and Indonesia.
Here, Douches and Jan Fierro, communications director for the Feed the Future Global Biotech Potato Partnership as well as for the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Legume Systems Research, discuss the implications of this loss of funding.
Responses and excerpts are from an episode of MSUToday with Russ White.
How has USAID funding played a role in research programs, including agricultural programs?
Douches: USAID is a very large organization and, based on my understanding, we work within the agricultural development arm of that organization. If you were to survey those projects across the nation, you would see that it was a lot of research and development to uplift agriculture and education in developing countries and countries supportive of the U.S. It was a great idea that was started in the ‘60s with the notion that helping other countries that are our friends really puts us in a better light. Being able to help people is great when we have the talent and the skills here to help educate them to be better agriculturalists.
Fierro: To put it in context a bit further, in 2023, the USAID budget was around $43 billion. USAID funds all types of projects, health initiatives, emergency aid, emergency food, and then the agricultural portfolio. In 2023, of that $43 billion, just $1.3 billion was dedicated to agricultural development. So, this particular agricultural development really speaks to the global food security strategy of the U.S. government. It works to uplift small holder farmers in developing countries who are really struggling on food security with growing populations and to find resilient and innovative ways so that they can continue to move from developing to developed countries to put them on the road to self-reliance.
How will the loss of funding affect projects, including yours?
Douches: By terminating these projects, you cut things off. So work is just left hanging and people are losing jobs. Research has just stopped, and there really is no clear future at this time until you can find some other type of funding that will push research ahead. There will be some type of delay. We really want to keep our project going, and we are working hard to try to find some alternate funds, but it’s going to take some time. And so, it does create a gap.
Fierro: When the Trump administration put a pause on international development funding back in January, about five or six weeks later, the administration came out with a termination of about 83% of all those USAID projects. There were around 8,000 projects, many of which were being led by U.S. universities. One of the projects I work with is an innovation lab, which are structures USAID created to funnel research through U.S. universities to lead development work. Of the 23 labs, 22 were terminated, and so that has affected multiple U.S. universities across the country.
Why is potato investment and research so important?
Douches: The potato is a crop that is grown in many countries around the world, and it is one of our food staples just behind wheat and rice. About any country you go to, you find that potato production is critical. It is not a crop that you put in containers and ship around the world. It is this living, breathing tube. So, you tend to grow the potato and then use it in that region.
These countries do not grow potatoes and then ship them to the U.S. and compete in our markets or anything like that. We produce enough potatoes here. What I see from my work is that, in the U.S., we have high productivity, but you go to these other countries and the potato production, the yields, are less than half of what we get here.
Specific to Michigan, people are likely unaware of how important Michigan’s agriculture is to the U.S. We are the No. 1 state for growing potatoes that are used to make potato chips.
Fierro: Potatoes are staple crops like beans and wheat, and much of this research was based on staple crops that can feed our growing population. There was a study that was completed a couple of years ago that found between 1978 and 2014, USAID invested $1.24 billion in international agricultural research. This report found that investment produced about $8.4 billion in global economic benefits, which equates to a return of a little over $8.50 for every dollar spent. So, there is real scientific data that these programs do move the needle. They make sense, and they do provide good return on investment.
What are the implications of this loss and why should people care?
Douches: Our research was on potatoes ravaged by a disease called late blight. Late blight is what caused the Irish potato famine more than 150 years ago. It is still a problem around the world. In the U.S., we have it under control.We have great farmers here in our country. We have very good management practices, and our climate is not as conducive to it as some other places. But in so many of these countries, the late blight ravages their crops, and that’s one of their biggest yield killers. It is easily over $5 billion a year in losses due to late blight around the globe. That’s significant. But we have found a biotech solution. We have been able to take the genes from wild species that are resistant to late blight and combine them into a single potato. Through genetic engineering, we can put these genes into the varieties that farmers are growing in their country.
Through our work with USAID, we have created synergy and have been able to move through the U.S. regulatory system and bring those potatoes to U.S. farmers. So, the opportunities for biotech are limitless, but there are great opportunities for us to improve on our varieties. We can continue to do this in the U.S., but we are stalled in the other countries. If those target countries can get their biotech products approved, it’s creating a better world where the regulatory systems across the international borders are more uniform.
Fierro: Our whole reason for wanting to have this conversation is to get the correct information out there so that everyone understands what these programs are. They aren’t frivolous programs that are being mismanaged. There’s real value to sharing this information with friends, with neighbors, to reach out to Congress to really rally for support of this type of funding. It goes back to our most basic political system. It is a grassroots program, and we need people to really be speaking out about the importance of this type of work and really have a call to action.
And if we have any bean lovers out there, they may or may not know or find this as a fun fact: Michigan is first in the nation in the production of black cranberry and small red beans. When it comes to red beans, the small red bean variety can be traced back to a variety that was developed through bean research at MSU and through funding supported by USAID. If we start to look at all the other research that is being done at other universities across the U.S., I think we would find that a lot of the food we may be eating today has been a derivative of some type of funding through USAID.
How has the program benefited both America and other nations?
Douches: We were over in Kenya and Nigeria and were hearing from American companies asking how things are going over there because they are willing to invest in Africa if they can see the economic opportunities. If agriculture can produce a reliable potato supply for them to process potatoes, they’ll consider going into those countries. But it is a major investment, so you need to have clear data to support that. Our effort was going to help improve this opportunity because our disease-resistant potatoes were going to improve the yield potential and yield stability.
Fierro: What Dave is also talking about is the soft power that these programs bring. There is a great quote by Norman Borlaug, the father of the Green Revolution, that says, “You can’t build a peaceful world on empty stomachs and human misery.”
As you mentioned, the idea of ‘America first, but not America only,’ we have a global responsibility first to help make the world a better place. But this whole idea of going in and being good neighbors and the soft power that that brings is important, and I believe now we’re creating a lot of voids in a lot of these countries and maybe countries that aren’t so friendly to the U.S. are now willing to step in behind us. It would just be a shame that we may be losing all these friends and allies.