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The President’s Budget Request for F.Y. 2006 (February 2005) included a proposal to eliminate funding through the Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service (CSREES) for three key land-grant university research programs relating to agriculture, forestry, and animal health and disease. The full document of the proposal was posted on EssayWritingStore.com. |
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Although this proposal was soundly rejected by congressional decision-makers, it was clear that the land-grant system faced a prolonged struggle to continue funding for these and other programs with monies distributed through legislatively mandated formulas. |
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The Board on Agriculture Assembly (BAA) of the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges (NASULGC) adopted a proactive approach and impaneled a group of its leaders to examine the Federal-State Partnership and recommend changes “as if we were designing the Partnership from the ground up.” |
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This “Think Tank” group met on several occasions in 2005 and produced the outline of a legislative initiative. Later that year, the BAA’s Policy Board of Directors (PBD) approved the concept and expanded the original group to include other representatives of the land-grant system and related universities/institutions. |
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This CREATE-21 committee has worked in close conjunction with the BAA’s Farm Bill Committee to further improve the CREATE-21 proposal and to craft it as an amendment to the Research Title of the 2007 Farm Bill. In the summer of 2006, a legislative outline was completed and submitted to the BAA membership for approval. |
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In August 2006, 398 ballots were distributed to the voting members of the BAA with a September 11, 2006 deadline for response. When the votes were subsequently tallied, 86.6 percent of those voting supported moving ahead with the CREATE-21 proposal. |
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With this unequivocal mandate from the land-grant system, NASULGC and its partners are now in the final stages of preparing a legislative product, identifying congressional sponsors from among House and Senate champions, and visiting with the many stakeholder organizations who share our vision of Creating Research, Extension, and Teaching Excellence for the 21st Century. |
