NASDA MEMBERS WANT MORE RESEARCH, TRADE FUNDING IN ’23 FARM BILL

Oct 12, 2023

The CEO of the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture says the US has fallen behind in funding ag research and trade programs.

Ted McKinney tells Brownfield research funding for land-grant institutions was a low priority in the last two farm bills and hopes that changes in the 2023 legislation. “And we’re now seeing some laboratories in universities, in some departments of ag waning. As you try to recruit new employees, you always have to be doing that. We’re losing the opportunity to continue to bring good talent into the world of food and agriculture.”

He says the next farm bill should include an increase in market access and foreign market development funding even though there has been some progress on trade policy like conversations with the UK and Indio-Pacific framework. “There is good in the discussions that are taking place. We cannot dismiss that. But so too, you’re only as good as you can get tariffs reduced and other barriers removed, and only then can you compete on a level playing field with others around the world.”

McKinney says his members also support an adequate safety net in the 2023 Farm Bill.

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Video: Seeing the Whole Season: How Continuous Crop Modeling Is Changing Breeding

Plant breeding has long been shaped by snapshots. A walk through a plot. A single set of notes. A yield check at the end of the season. But crops do not grow in moments. They change every day.

In this conversation, Gary Nijak of AerialPLOT explains how continuous crop modeling is changing the way breeders see, measure, and select plants by capturing growth, stress, and recovery across the entire season, not just at isolated points in time.

Nijak breaks down why point-in-time observations can miss critical performance signals, how repeated, season-long data collection removes the human bottleneck in breeding, and what becomes possible when every plot is treated as a living data set. He also explores how continuous modeling allows breeding programs to move beyond vague descriptors and toward measurable, repeatable insights that connect directly to on-farm outcomes.

This conversation explores:

• What continuous crop modeling is and how it works

• Why traditional field observations fall short over a full growing season

• How scale and repeated measurement change breeding decisions

• What “digital twins” of plots mean for selection and performance

• Why data, not hardware, is driving the next shift in breeding innovation As data-driven breeding moves from research into real-world programs, this discussion offers a clear look at how seeing the whole season is reshaping value for breeders, seed companies, and farmers, and why this may be only the beginning.