Alan Guebert is an Illinois farm journalist.
No farmer would sell his corn planter to finance a vacation or purchase a new pickup truck. The long-term consequences of such a foolish strategy are evident. Yet similar steps are being taken by government and corporations every day. Under pressure to slash spending or boost profits, government and business have been holding flat or steadily paring away crucial spending on basic research that will lead to future products, markets and profits.
In short, old Bossy is being sold today for four days at Disney World next week. And next month’s milk check? Oh, say these live-for-today folks, we’ll worry about that next month.
Read Also
Agriculture needs to prepare for government spending cuts
As government makes necessary cuts to spending, what can be reduced or restructured in the budgets for agriculture?
An example illustrates. Few dispute that the world is fast moving to an information-based economy.
Even Newt Gingrich believes harnessing this “Third Wave” is the key to America’s role in the 21st century. (Gingrich rarely speaks of the first two “waves”, however; development of the ag economy in the 19th century and the industrial economy in the 20th).
Despite the certain need for future information technology, American makers of electronics and communication gear, according to a May 22 Wall Street Journal story, have slashed basic research spending 64 percent between 1988 and 1992. Government-funded basic research in this area, rising for five previous years, crested in 1994 and will fall in 1995.
Farmers call this short-sided trend eating the seedcorn. In Washington it’s called balancing the budget in seven years, or worse, balancing the budget while dishing out fat, Disney-like tax cuts.
Industry labels it something else. “It’s a short-term response aimed at keeping stockholders happy,” notes one economics professor in the Journal story.
Federal and corporate funding of basic ag research has eluded budget cutters and bean counters. According to Julian Alston, an ag economist at the University of California-Davis, publicly and privately funded ag research grew 8.5 percent per year between 1972 and 1992.
Those numbers are impressive until the foam of inflation is siphoned off, says Keith Fuglie, an economist at USDA’s Economic Research Service. “There was real growth in research spending through about 1980,” Fuglie offers. “Since then, however, real spending has been flat.”
Flat, however, is a word no longer used in Washington. Cut is the word du jour.
Both the House and Senate budget resolutions suggest cuts of between 10 percent and 23 percent for ag research and co-operative extension federal appropriations in fiscal year 1996.
After that, no one is quite sure what will happen.
For instance, the 1996 House budget resolution appears to recommend a $74-million cut in the $440 million federal co-operative extension appropriation.
Also, the recently passed, seven-year House balanced-budget resolution appears to carry that cut every year through 2002. If so, then the suggested action actually means a cut of $518 million out of $3.08 billion, or about 17 percent, in extension funding through 2002.
Donald L. Uchtmann, director of the University of Illinois Cooperative Extension Service, knows what it means: “Enormous challenges,” he says rather graciously.
“In 1980, the federal government was a 40 percent partner of the U of I Cooperative Extension Service,” notes Uchtmann. “Today, they are a 27 percent partner.” Future federal cuts, he reckons, will bring a larger reliance on technology, “a greater collaboration between counties and states, and more temporary employees.”
Given the government and private research cuts, though, one hopes extension office temps aren’t left riding Newt’s Third Wave with just two tin cans and piece of string between them.
