2012 budget plan slices USDA research, assistance

MAT-SU — Proposed federal budget cuts threaten funding in Alaska for research projects in growth areas of Alaska’s agricultural industry. Budget cuts already eliminated a program that relocated homes threatened by the Matanuska River.

The 2012 budget proposal for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s discretionary programs, which do not include food stamps, is $18.8 billion, a reduction of $1.3 billion. That comes on the heels of cuts in the fiscal 2011 budget, passed last week.

If the 2012 cuts go into effect, after Sept. 30 there will be no federal money to support research here in such areas as horticulture and composting.

Norm Harris, administrator of the Palmer Center for Sustainable Living, more commonly known as UAF Matanuska Experiment Farm, said while some of those cuts would be temporarily offset with $270,000 in federal funding to the state to allow some projects to be wrapped up, funding would disappear in 2013.

Harris said that means Alaskans will be left to depend on research done in other states.

“Not everything is known about Alaska agriculture that should be,” Harris said. “There’s a lot of research that can be done.”

The problem he sees is one beleaguering Alaska for 100 years: the notion there is no agriculture in Alaska.

Unless there is a reprieve, the Alaska office of the Agricultural Research Service will disappear, too, along with nine others nationwide. ARS, which among other work maintains a bank of seeds and germplasm to protect the genetic materials of a wide variety of plants both native to and suitable for growing in Alaska, has an office at the Trunk Road experiment farm and a research site at UAF in Fairbanks.

The closure would mean the collections under the care of Dan Barney, ARS-Arctic and Subarctic Plant Gene Bank curator and horticulturist, could be parceled out to other states, or be abandoned, instead of being the subjects of ongoing research.

Barney said the collection in Alaska includes more than 500 accessions of mint, 80 of rhubarb and nearly 60 of herbaceous peonies. Accessions are variations of the plants, often specific to locations, and include informal crossbreeding or crosses between wild and cultured plants. The accessions are important for research and to preserve eco-diversity, say scientists.

Palmer is the primary U.S. National Plant Germplasm System genebank for mints, peonies, currants and gooseberries and rhubarb.

Both peonies and rhubarb are seen by some agriculturalists as high-potential crops for Alaska farmers.

Loss of ARS’s research would deal a blow to the fledgling industries, said Carol Kenley, a rhubarb grower and secretary of the Mat-Su Chapter of Alaska Farm Bureau. Kenley said there are no agricultural companies or commodity groups to fund research here; farmers depend on government research.

Kenley admitted that 10 years ago she wouldn’t have been dismayed by projected cuts at the research facilities. But she said she’s learned the important role the germplasm bank plays in helping growers.

“We want to get these different varieties and test them,” Kenley said. It’s not just about yield, she said, but a host of other characteristics.

The other critical aspect is ARS’s role preserving genetic diversity when few varieties of any crop are grown on farms and in gardens. She said growers want consistency in their fields; researchers focus on diversity.

“You want to preserve that (genetic) diversity,” Kenley said, “and there’s no economic incentive to do that.”

Barney said culinary rhubarb isn’t the only up-and-coming member of the Alaska rhubarb family.

“The medicinal market is untapped,” Barney said. Little research has been done to determine what varieties could translate into a cash crop.

Barney said doing research in Alaska is important to see how plants will develop in the climate and what cultural practices will be used to grow the crops.

“Alaska has a very unique climate that affects how plants grow and produce,” Barney said. The short season with its long days of sunlight are not duplicated anywhere else in the United States.

For a crop like peonies, only recently cultivated commercially in Alaska for the lucrative wedding flower market, studies have barely begun on what varieties will do well.

“We are very much in the infancy on that,” Barney said.

Craige and Kathy Baker at Gray Owl Farm of Palmer have about 1,500 peony plants in the ground. It will be another year before they can start harvesting the plants, which mature at 3 years old.

Craige Baker said they’ve planted a dozen varieties as they look for which ones will do well. The farm was also selected to help with university research by recording soil temperature and other information on a small weather station. That weather station is another victim of the funding cutbacks.

“I want them to continue,” Baker said of the research efforts. “Anything they do is a plus for the people growing them.”

While the potato industry is well established here, the state’s uniqueness for lack of diseases gives it prime export potential for seed potatoes to places like China and Taiwan. Without continued research, 20 years of establishing that export market could be jeopardized.

“I think the state is going to have to pick up the potato funding if they want it done,” Harris said.

ARS and Matanuska Experiment Farm are not the only local farm and conservation entities threatened by the budget cuts.

The recently passed fiscal 2011 budget cut the Resource Conservation and Development program, including federal support to the Mat-Su RC&D office in Wasilla, from the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service budget.

Molly Voeller, public affairs specialist for NRCS-Alaska in Palmer, said RC&D was designed to promote community projects that focused on “quality of life” improvements in community development, land conservation, water management and environmental enhancement.

Projects completed in Alaska though RC&D include a recycling program and abandoned car removal in Copper Center, an access trail through tundra in Hooper Bay, an agricultural forum in Kenai Peninsula, and a community garden in Fort Yukon.

The budget also eliminated NRCS’s watershed budget, which funded the sale and razing of homes threatened by the migrating channel of the Matanuska River. NRCS provided $594,000 to the Mat-Su Borough for the acquisition program in 2006. NRCS also supplied $355,000 to help fund a borough-U.S. Geological Survey study on the river.

Voeller said Alaska NRCS continues to support conservation on private lands, with such programs as farm planning and funding for high-tunnel greenhouses, bear fencing and organic farming initiatives.

At the USDA Farm Service Agency, Danny Consenstein, state executive director, said they are already reeling from $100 million in cuts agency wide for the remaining months in fiscal 2011. Consenstein said he hopes the agency can avoid furloughing any of the eight Alaska employees when the 2012 budget is settled. He wasn’t optimistic about the political budget process.

“It’s going to be a bloodbath,” Consenstein said.