US aid cuts put world’s food at risk

The US Agency for International Development has been a major supporter of global agriculture research. Now many studies are being scuttled or scaled back, writes Ted Alcorn from New York

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Brian Diers was employed by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign soybean 'innovation lab' before it was shuttered. Now he works with soybean plants on a volunteer basis.

Crops and livestock that are essential for feeding the world’s population are constantly threatened by depleted soil, evolving pathogens and erratic weather spurred by a changing climate.

So in laboratories and farms around the world, scientists labour to protect them, breeding more resilient varieties and developing farming practices to stabilise harvests against the swings and shocks of the environment.

But lately, the United States, not nature, has created the biggest uncertainty for global agriculture.

Until last year, when the Trump administration dismantled it, the US Agency for International Development had been a major supporter of global agricultural science, disbursing about $150 million a year to universities, companies and international research centres.

That funding was part of the Feed the Future initiative, which was most recently reauthorised in 2023, with broad bipartisan support. Now, around the world, scientists are scuttling or scaling back studies meant to defend the world’s food supply against plant disease outbreaks, and to develop crops and farming practices that will help ensure adequate food in the decades to come.

About a third of Feed the Future's agricultural science budget went to 17 labs at US universities that study everything from aquaculture and cereals to fruits and tubers. All but one of the labs received stop-work orders early last year when the Trump administration froze development spending and later eliminated it.