Federal Agencies

ASA, CSSA, and SSSA has sent a letter to President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team outlining priority areas within USDA for the incoming Biden administration. The letter focused on the need for USDA to address agriculture research through the lens of systems science. It also highlighted the role that agriculture - and the farmers, ranchers, and researchers who support it - can play in addressing climate change through mitigation, adaptation, and management strategies.

ASA, CSSA, and SSSA responded to a request for comments from the Environmental Protection Agency regarding regulatory exemptions proposed for certain plants created using gene-editing technologies. EPA’s proposed rule was decades in the making and was written to complement USDA’s recent rule on the matter.

ASA, CSSA, and SSSA submitted comments to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) voicing concern over a proposed change to end the longstanding “duration of status” visa policy that allows international students to stay in the United States until they complete their degrees.

ASA, CSSA, and SSSA joined 82 other scientific and educational groups in supporting the House Science Committee’s call for the National Academies to study systemic racism in academia.

USDA requested input on the Agriculture Innovation Agenda, its vision for the future of agriculture that includes increasing agriculture’s productivity while decreasing its environmental footprint. ASA, CSSA, and SSSA, as a part of an intersociety Task Force, responded that the Agriculture Innovation Agenda goals first depend on keeping Americans farming.

ASA, CSSA, and SSSA joined 67 educational and scientific societies in opposing plans announced by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to modify the exemption to the Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP). The letter, sent to the White House, Department of Homeland Security and Department of State, calls on ICE to immediately withdraw the modification that ends the exemption allowing international students to stay in county and take online courses.

In the coming weeks, Congress plans to pursue another $1-2 trillion COVID-19 relief package. ASA, CSSA, and SSSA have been working with our partners to try and add researchers to the list of impacted industries. The research and university communities are asking Congress to include $26 billion in supplemental extramural research funds in the next relief package.

Due to the disruptions arising from the national response to COVID-19, multiple federal agencies are making adjustments to their procedures, including extending deadlines for grant solicitations. USDA NIFA has extended deadlines for several solicitations. NSF has released FAQ documents on grant deadlines, travel, and review panelists.

ASA, CSSA, and SSSA responded to a request for comments from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy regarding ideal characteristics of a data repository. The Societies suggested that repositories should ascribe to FAIR (Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, Reusability) principles and that long-term sustainability and business models for repositories need to be defined.

USDA NIFA Director Dr. Scott Angle asked the Agronomy, Crop, and Soil Science Societies for our ideas on how to improve the implementation of NIFA’s capacity and competitive programs and what could be done to increase NIFA’s transparency, effectiveness, and efficiency of its organizational structure. In January 2020, the Societies’ Science Policy Office sent out a survey on these issues to all membership.