03/02/05 Federal funds and the fruit industry, Pt3

The concern by Colleges of Agriculture for various land grant schools with the President's proposed fiscal year 2006 budget stem from reductions in formula funds. Those funds aid in supporting the basic infrastructure for ag research programs, such as those conducting tree fruit research, at schools such as Oregon State University and Washington State University. But according to Oregon State University's Dean of Agricultural Sciences, Thayne Dutson, the impact would not just be on the lost of faculty, but lost research. DUTSON: Say we have ten people working on tree fruit research. With the cuts being proposed over the next two years, we essentially would lose at least one of those ten people. And so we would have a reduction of that work directly of ten per cent. Duston say another impact of losing personnel would be losing opportunity to obtain monies for research. DUTSON: They bring in money from the industry in grants and they also get grants from other sources such as E.P.A. for example to look at the environmental side of things. So the grants and contracts that we bring in is ten times more than the amount of dollars that we get from U.S.D.A. More in our next program.