Reshaping Agricultural Research

In the 150 years since President Abraham Lincoln created a Dept. of Agriculture, agricultural research has given the United States a food-and-fiber production system that is second to none. Today, this system produces enough food to feed its citizens while exporting billions of dollars of agricultural products each month—all with a fraction of the rural workforce that led Lincoln to dub the embryonic USDA “the people’s department.”

For most of the past year, I was privileged to help lead the rese…