The U.S. House of Representatives’ Appropriations Committee has advanced a bill to fund the USDA through fiscal year 2024, and once again, included in the committee’s report is language supportive of aerial application technology research. The supportive language in the committee’s report is as follows:
Aerial Application.—The Committee recognizes the importance of aerial application to control crop pests and diseases and to fertilize and seed crops and forests. Aerial application is useful not only to ensure overall food safety and food security, but also to promote public health through improved mosquito control and public health application techniques. The Committee urges ARS to prioritize research focused on optimizing aerial spray technologies for on-target deposition and drift mitigation and to work cooperatively with the Environmental Protection Agency to update their pesticide review methodology.
The fiscal year 2024 bill provides $17.838 billion of funding, a 30% reduction from the fiscal year 2023 bill; however, it includes $8 billion in unused funding rescissions from the Inflation Reduction Act, Covid-19 funding and other programs, which would provide a total of $25.3 billion to the agencies. The fiscal year 2023 bill was $25.48 billion. Language in the bill also restricts Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack’s ability to use money from the Commodity Credit Corporation, a source of funding he has tapped to launch the agency’s flagship climate program. The Senate is slated to mark up its Ag Appropriations bill today.
Since 2002 through the current federal government fiscal year of 2023, NAAA has been successful in securing an additional $12,512,500 for the Aerial Application Technology Research Unit (AATRU) within USDA’s Agricultural Research Service (ARS). In 2011 Congress enacted a ban on earmarking money for specific projects; however, NAAA was able to keep aerial application research funding steady by having the supportive report language inserted into past appropriation bills and farm bills. NAAA is also currently working on inserting language supportive of aerial application research in the 2023 Farm Bill that is currently being crafted by the House and Senate Agriculture Committees.
NAAA will continue to work for adequate USDA-ARS aerial application technology research funding so long as the research is equitably distributed toward the type of aerial applications conducted most. In addition, so long as the research is being focused on further integrating georeferencing variable rate flow control incorporating meteorologic and digital mapping, and aircraft attitude technologies on board the aircraft to automate the spray systems further, resulting in mitigating drift, conserving fuel and making aerial applications more efficacious, while allowing the pilot to focus on flying the aircraft more safely by allowing that pilot to observe obstacles outside the cockpit. Favorable committee report language sends a strong message to the USDA to continue to sustain appropriate funding for aerial application research. This message couldn’t be more important as the USDA-ARS has had its budget cut over the past few years, resulting in the shutdown of multiple research units.
