BASIC RESEARCH IN AGRICULTURE

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 1959

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE AND ASTRONAUTICS,

Washington, D.C.

The committee met at 10 a.m., in the caucus room, Old House Office Building, the Honorable Overton Brooks, chairman of the committee, presiding.

The CHAIRMAN. The committee will please come to order.

This morning, members of the committee, we are exploring the jurisdiction of the committee in reference to agricultural research and scientific activity, and with this in mind we have asked Dr. George W. Irving, Jr., Deputy Administrator, Agricultural Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, to give us a rundown on the program of the Agriculture Department insofar as science and research is concerned.

We also are pleased to have with us this morning Mr. S. P. Lejko, who is Assistant to the Administrator, Agricultural Research Service. Before we begin this morning, I would like to make the announcement that Mr. Anfuso, who for years was a member of the Agriculture Committee and who transferred over to this committee because, I imagine, it promised a livelier jurisdiction, called from New York to express his regrets that he is not able to be here for the subject of agriculture, but it wasn't possible for him to get down this morning. Now Dr. Irving, you have a prepared statement, which is a rather lengthy statement, too, and we will be very happy to hear it.

STATEMENT OF DR. GEORGE W. IRVING, JR., DEPUTY ADMINISTRATOR, AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH SERVICE, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE, ACCOMPANIED BY S. P. LEJKO, ASSISTANT TO THE ADMINISTRATOR, AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH SERVICE, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE

Dr. IRVING. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

You have asked that we discuss with you some of the aspects of science in the U.S. Department of Agriculture. As I am sure you know, agricultural research has been an organized national effort in this country since the establishment of the Department in 1862. It has developed into a great cooperative undertaking, in which Federal, State, and county governments, private industry, farmers and farmer organizations, and private foundations are associated for a common purpose-to discover new knowledge of benefit to agriculture and to the Nation generally.

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To a large extent, this cooperative enterprise is publicly financed. Out of it have come many advances including today's mechanized agriculture, which permits a small minority of our population to produce more than enough to meet the Nation's needs for food, fiber, and other agricultural products. Farming efficiency has so increased, in the past 20 years, that today fewer farmers produce 40 percent more on about the same acreage cultivated in 1939.

Agricultural research laid the foundation for modern food processing. It has developed frozen concentrated orange juice and other new processed foods. It discovered some of the vitamins, and some of today's wonder drugs, such as streptomycin; it devised mass-production methods for penicillin. It invented the aerosol bomb, which was designed originally to dispense insecticides and is now used to package hundreds of different products. The many achievements of agricultural research have benefited not only farmers but the entire country. The major aims of research in the Department of Agriculture include

1. Improvement of our crops, livestock, and farming machinery and methods, with a view to more efficient production of farm products of all kinds;

2. Improved methods for controlling plant and animal diseases, insects and other pests, and weeds, to minimize agriculturaĺ losses;

3. Improved methods for conservation and management of our forests, soils, and water, to aid in more effective use of these

resources.

4. Improved handling, processing, and marketing of farm and forest products, for the benefit of agriculture and the general public; and

5. Development of new knowledge needed for better human nutrition, better consumer use of foods, fibers, and other products, and more efficient household management.

Today, since farmers are producing not only enough for our needs, but actually more of some crops than we can use at present, agricultural research has two additional objectives, which currently rank in importance with those I have already mentioned. They are:

To develop new and expanded markets for established crops; and to discover and develop replacement crops, which can be grown profitably on land now being used to raise surpluses.

The main emphasis in our current research is on work to expand the markets for agricultural products and to lower the cost of producing them.

In USDA, this research job is done by about 4,800 scientists, working at some 600 locations throughout the United States and supported by about $90 million annually. The Department's program is supplemented by about $132 million worth of research at the State agricultural experiment stations, including work supported by some $32 million of Federal grant funds administered by USDA.

Most of the Department's research is conducted in cooperation with the State experiment stations. In addition, research and development studies are carried on cooperatively with private research institutions and with industry. Some 600 cooperative agreements are now in force between USDA and nongovernmental agencies.

The Department also supports research through contracts with universities and other research organizations, and recently we have been given additional authority by Congress to make grants for basic research. In the past year or so we have initiated an extensive contract and grant program overseas, for work in all phases of agricultural research, in countries where foreign currencies derived from U.S. sales of farm commodities under Public Law 480 are available.

The Department has put increasing emphasis on basic research in all its programs, both at home and abroad. In the past dozen years, we have increased the proportion of total USDA research effort devoted to basic studies from about 7 to 22 percent. In the Agricultural Research Service, about 25 percent of our research is now in the basic category. During the past 5 years, the State experiment stations, on the average, have increased the proportion of their Federal grant funds devoted to basic research from 12 to 22 percent.

Most of the Department's basic research is conducted in our regular research divisions, in direct support of applied-research programs. However, in the past year and a half, the Agricultural Research Service has strengthened its efforts in basic research through the creation of pioneering research laboratories, staffed with selected scientists who devote themselves solely to advancing the frontiers of knowledge, without immediate concern with the solution of practical problems. We now have 15 of these pioneering research laboratories in operation. They are working to answer fundamental questions in the fields of mineral nutrition of plants, plant physiology, plant viruses, plant fibers, enzymes, and seed proteins; allergens of agricultural products; animal genetics, animal proteins, blood antigens, and cellular metabolism; insect physiology and insect pathology; the chemistry of microorganisms; and the economics of interfirm integration in farm

ing.

Scientists chosen for this work have demonstrated their capacity for independent, creative investigations. They have been relieved of the usual administrative and supervisory duties. In every possible way, we are trying to provide in these pioneering laboratories for the freer play of genius in agricultural research.

Basic research in agriculture is naturally concerned in large part with the biological sciences. However, considerable work is necessary also in chemistry, physics, and other physical sciences, and in economics and other social sciences.

Besides gaining a better understanding of plants and animals, of diseases and insects, and of the enzymes, allergens, micro-organisms and other biological entities important to agriculture, we need to explore such physical-science questions as the chemical makeup of effective insecticides, herbicides, and other pest-control chemicals; the structure of cotton and wool fibers and the effects on them of various chemical treatments; the use of radioactive materials for a variety of agricultural research purposes; the composition of plant substances; and a wide range of other problems-in hydrology, fluid mechanics, soil aerodynamics, statistical analysis, polymer synthesis, electron microscopy, and many other fields.

Thus, basic research in agriculture is relevant to basic research in all science. Its methods are the same, and its results have potential application far beyond the field of agriculture itself-in human medi

breeders have recently developed experimental varieties in which about 80 percent of the starch is amylose. This gives us a potential replacement crop, with excellent market possibilities, which might be grown on large acreages now devoted to surplus grains.

Research with soybeans provides a good illustration of our work to expand markets for oilseeds. We all remember the poor-flavored soybean oil we had during World War II. Since then, Peoria scientists have determined the cause of flavor instability and developed processing procedures that produce a high-quality oil with good storability. As a result, soybean oil today leads by a wide margin in the field of food fats and oils.

Research has also found many new industrial uses for soybean oil. Soybean fatty acids have been combined into dimer acids, to produce new industrial resins of great flexibility. Dimer acids are now available in carload lots, and they are being used to make plasticizers, lubricant additives, gelled paints, and numerous other industrial products.

Still more recently, chemists have prepared vinyl ethers from fatty components of both soybean and linseed oils that offer substantial promise as protective coatings, finishes, and adhesives. These vinyl ethers show unusual resistance to alkali and acids and unusual adherence to metals.

These and other developments should help to maintain soybeans as a primary source of industrial raw materials, and thus help to keep this crop from becoming another farm surplus.

You may know what happened to inedible animal fats when synthetic detergents took over the soap market several years ago. Only about a fourth of our annual supply of 3 billion pounds of these fats now goes into soap. Our Philadelphia laboratory has attacked the fat surplus problem from many angles. As a result of its research, about 200 million pounds of fats are being used annually in new industrial products.

More recently, the scientists at Philadelphia have discovered that a fat derivative called vinyl stearate can be used in making superior flexible plastics. Conventional plasticizers used to give durability or flexibility to these products eventually leach out and leave the material brittle and easily damaged. Since vinyl stearate is tied in chemically with the base plastic, it cannot evaporate or wash out. This product is now in commercial production. Besides its use in plastics, it promises to become a valuable component of new textile finishes, paper coatings, and adhesives.

Utilization research on cotton has resulted in commercial production of wash-and-wear cottons; durable flame-resistant cotton fabrics; heat-resistant cotton for use in commercial and home laundries; and other improved cotton materials, as well as more economical methods and equipment for the manufacture of cotton textiles.

Among many new chemical treatments being developed to improve the market qualities of cotton is one that imparts superior wash-andwear properties, permits the setting of permanent creases in cotton as desired, and gives the fabric resistance to unwanted wrinkles. Fabrics or garments so treated can be washed and dried in household laundry equipment, and chlorine bleaches can be used without harm to the garment. The process is now in the final testing stage, and we

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are hopeful that it will provide wider market opportunities for our surplus cotton in apparel uses.

These are just a few examples of how we are developing new market outlets for existing agricultural commodities. We are also looking for new crops that might take over some of the acreage now producing crops in actual or potential surplus. Hundreds of plants from many areas of the world are being systematically studied to determine their content of unusual raw materials and their adaptability to American agriculture.

Any new crop, to be successful in finding industrial uses, must satisfy the quality, price, and supply requirements of an industrial raw material. And it should provide needed products not available from existing crops. We'd like to find a new crop that would prove as successful as the soybean, which has developed in 50 years from an Oriental curiosity to one of our leading crops, with hundreds of industrial and food uses. We are hopeful that castor beans, safflower, and sesamealready established in limited areas-will eventually replace substantial acreages of existing surplus crops. Their oils contain substances with industrial potentialities not supplied by other oilseeds. There is every reason to expect, also, that other useful crops will emerge from the intensive studies now underway.

Although we are looking especially for large new industrial outlets. for agricultural products, we are also doing considerable work to expand food uses of farm commodities through development of processed food products of high quality, convenient to keep and to use. Both consumers and farmers benefit from the more orderly marketing and greater price stability that result from year-around availability of perishable products.

New processed foods now in production or ready for commercial use include several fruit and vegetable juice powders, fruit-juice superconcentrates, and dehydro frozen fruits and vegetables. Orangejuice powder was tested, with favorable results, by the crew of the atomic submarine Nautilus on its recent history-making trip across the top of the world beneath the polar ice. On a subsequent cruise, the men on the Nautilus also reported favorably on apple and grape juice concentrates developed in our research. We are making good progress in the development of a dried whole milk that will keep without refrigeration and can be reconstituted easily in cold water to give a product indistinguishable from fresh milk.

In efforts to extend the storage life of fresh food products, we are investigating the possibilities of irradiation, antibiotics, and other treatments to retard growth of spoilage organisms and to maintain fresh qualities in marketing channels with less dependence on refrigeration.

We in the Department recognize that making our research results widely available to farmers and others who can use them—is an integral part of the research job. In fact, this is an activity in which all employees in our research agencies participate. All media of communication are utilized in this effort, from articles published in scientific journals to spot news announcements for the general public broadcast on television.

We cooperate with other Federal and State agencies-especially the cooperative State extension services-in disseminating much of our