This came across my email from the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture (PASA). If you are interested in publicly-funded research in sustainable agriculture, you'll be interested to know there is a petition to keep Penn State's Pasture Lab operational (Bush wants to zero out the funding). If you are from out-of-state and are concerned about this, please consider copying Casey and Specter on letters to your own congress critters as well. I am copying the relevant part of their email wholesale and would gladly link to it if it were available on the web. So far I can't find it.
Potential closing of the USDA-ARS Pasture Lab located at Penn State
Those of you who were at our conference this year heard the news that the new federal budget submitted to Congress by President Bush would eliminate funding for the Pasture Systems and Watershed Management Research Unit operated by the Agricultural Research Service on the Penn State campus. Given the critical importance of pasture systems in helping to improve farm profitability, repair our badly damaged natural environment and restore health to our people, it is simply unthinkable that the doors could be closed on this facility that serves the entire Northeastern United States.
Fortunately, a petition to restore the $4.42 million necessary to maintain the University Park facility is being filed by members of Pennsylvania's Congressional delegation. But they need our support to make this petition stick. Please consider writing letters to Senators Specter and Casey, and the Representative in your district, asking that this petition be supported and funding for the Pasture Lab restored. Letters should be received in the Washington D.C. offices by Friday, March 7 in order to be helpful to the cause.
Some factors you may want to include in your letters, in terms of current research priorities at the lab include the following:
- Nutrient management (Phosphorus, Nitrogen, Carbon)
- Air quality (odor emissions from agriculture)
- Water quality (erosion, nutrient runoff)
- Integrated pasture and cropping systems
- Animal nutrition and grazing behavior
- Biofuel production from warm-season grasses (at least it’s not corn!)
- Economic analyses of alternative farm management strategies
You may also want to include a personal statement indicating the importance of grazing research to your operation and/or to your family or community. But in general, let’s just make the point that we ought to be moving forward with research important to the future of farming in this country, not backwards! The bottom line is that less publicly funded research means more corporately funded research done not necessarily with the public's best interests in mind. Please ask them to reinstate the full $4.42 Million in funding for the USDA-ARS Pasture Systems and Watershed Management Research Unit at University Park, PA.
Here is the contact information for Pennsylvania’s two senators:
Senator Arlen Specter
711 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington DC 20510
(Please copy Senator Specter’s aide at: josh_stull@specter.senate.gov)
Senator Robert P. Casey
383 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington DC 20510
To contact your Representative in the House, please go to www.house.gov to acquire the correct address.
Out of state PASA members should write to your own Senators (www.senate.gov) and Representatives, but please copy Senators Specter and Casey as well so they can see the out-of-state support. Thank you!