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Censky: stakeholder input will improve Ag Innovation Agenda

USDA Deputy Secretary Steve Censky says recent stakeholder input on the USDA’s Ag Innovation Agenda will help identify and accelerate adoption of innovation.

The Ag Innovation Agenda is a department-wide effort to increase US ag production by 40 percent and reduce its environmental footprint in half by 2050.

“We put out the call of what do we need to be focusing our research on in order to meet that goal,” He says. “We also put out the call of how can we better adopt some of the promising technologies into our programs so that they are more readily available so that we can speed up the adoption curves among farmers and ranchers.”

The USDA says input from the agricultural and scientific community will help inform research goals.

He says the USDA will also develop metrics that will allow farmers to participate.

“We are filling in some of the data gaps so that we can better track environmental performance and that will allow farmers to participate in voluntary carbon markets and other mechanisms that are there in the future,” he says.

He says the Ag Innovation Agenda is a stark contrast to the European Union’s Farm to Fork Strategy.

“Under the US approach we want to bring on innovation and new technologies,” he says. “In the EU their strategy is about taking technologies away from farmers…we think that’s going to have disastrous results and we think a far better way to go is to welcome technology.”

Censky spoke during Agri-Pulses Agriculture Outlook Forum on Monday.