Davis, Ca;lifornia, USA
March 3, 2026
Plants growing in a greenhouse on the UC Davis campus (Jael Mackendorf / UC Davis)
Dean Ashley M. Stokes (Jael Mackendorf / UC Davis)
For two and a half centuries, the United States has been founded upon our capacity to feed communities, both at home and throughout the world. Through the forethought of federal legislators and Abraham Lincoln, we now have a complex and interconnected cooperative system for growing, cultivating, harvesting, processing and delivering the food we all rely on.
That system is nothing short of a daily miracle, delivering, despite the increasing and unpredictable challenges that farmers and the agricultural industry face, healthy and abundant food to retailers and communities across the country and worldwide.
Underpinning this miracle is a partnership among farmers, state and federal government, and public research universities, like the University of California, Davis, where I serve as dean of the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.
A series of acts established by the federal government provided the foundation of the United States agricultural powerhouse we see today. In 1862, the Morrill Land Grant Act was established and signed by Abraham Lincoln after the Civil War to establish higher education institutions to provide education for the broader population and to promote education in agriculture and the mechanical arts.
Following the Morrill Act was the Hatch Act of 1887, which designated funding to each state for agricultural programs, research and institutions of higher education. We still use this funding to empower faculty to seek innovative solutions to our most critical issues in food, agriculture, environment, community support and human and social needs.
Brandon Minto, federal government relations director, Dean Ashley M. Stokes, Associate Dean Amanda Guyer and Executive Associate Dean Jason Bond at the U.S. Capitol to advocate for funding and support. (Courtesy photo)
The Smith-Lever Act of 1914 created the Cooperative Extension (CE) arm for this work, bringing the science of higher education straight to communities across every state and territory. Campus-based CE specialists conduct applied research, bridge broader research solutions, and with other key CE educators develop and provide programs for the complex issues that growers, farmworkers and communities face.
These three historical agreements created the robust system we see today: States house public universities and rely upon university scientists to conduct federal research that, among other things, supports our robust, national food supply.
Before seeds are even planted in the ground, the partnership among industry, government and academia has spawned innovations that allow crops and livestock to thrive in different climates, resist disease, yield larger and more nutritious products, while increasing environmental stewardship. In recent years, agricultural innovations such as artificial intelligence, CRISPR gene editing and other technologies have benefited from these partnerships with significant research and extension driven by our land grant universities.
UC Davis has consistently ranked among the top universities in the world and No. 1 in the nation for more than a decade in agriculture. Situated on 5,300 acres amid productive farmland, UC Davis has played a crucial role reshaping entire industries with innovations that improved global food systems. Those include a new variety of tomato and a mechanical harvester that revolutionized the tomato industry, improved rice yield and disease resistance, and flood resilience to avoid famine and secure global food security.
Many of these programs have relied on federal support, and we are grateful for our strong partnerships with the USDA and its National Institute of Food and Agriculture. Overall, the federal government provided 47% of the $961 million in funding for research at UC Davis for fiscal year 2024-25, but for the past year, universities have been met with concerns that federal grants will be rescinded, not renewed, or that funding for overhead costs will be dramatically reduced. For over 80 years it has been of benefit to federal agencies that universities bear the facilities, research expertise, compliance systems, staff support and other real costs that enable research at scale along national priority areas.
Agricultural research is not immune to these cuts. Last year we lost government funding for a new animal science innovation center and closed two Feed the Future Innovation Labs, which served to introduce new innovations to improve livelihoods for farmers globally.
The history of federal funding to support agriculture and the science behind it was not arbitrary, and this relationship sets us apart from the rest of the world. Last week I joined my colleagues to represent UC Davis with several other land-grant universities, the Council for Agricultural Research, Extension, and Teaching and the Association for Public and Land Grant Universities, in Washington D.C., to advocate for funding and federal support for science.
UC Davis stands as the leading institution in agriculture, and we are dedicated to honoring our commitment to the land-grant mission, advocating on behalf of food and agricultural education, and upholding our promise to serve with our industry, governmental and community partners, as we have done for more than 100 years.
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