The specialty crop industry in the United States has grown dramatically over the years to become a billion-dollar industry supported by thousands of fruit and vegetable growers all across the country. Like commodity farmers, specialty crop producers face production and marketing challenges on their farms – such as how to manage specific pest and disease outbreaks or how to develop the right fruit and vegetable varieties that grow well in a given region. All of these challenges require a significant investment in research in order to find solutions and ensure the success of the specialty crop sector. Congress recognized this need when it created the Specialty Crop Research Initiative (SCRI) – a federal research program designed to help solve a variety of challenges that specialty crop producers face.
Learn More About SCRI!
The Specialty Crop Research Initiative (SCRI) provides competitive grants for regional and multi-state projects that conduct scientific research related to specialty crops, the results of which are communicated to producers so that they can put new practices into action to improve their viability, sustainability, and profitability. Specialty crops are defined in law as fruits and vegetables, tree nuts, dried fruits, and horticulture and nursery crops, including floriculture. The key to this program is its ability to being scientists from different backgrounds together to address farm to table issues in the specialty crop industry and combine it with outreach to ensure that the research is translated into practical information that producers can use.
SCRI seeks to solve critical specialty crop issues through the integration of research and extension activities. Extension activities are non-research activities designed to bring expertise gained through research directly to farmers and the public at the local level. These activities are often provided through extension offices at the county or regional level.
SCRI is administered by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA).
SCRI has five focus areas mandated by the farm bill that will each receive at least 10 percent of the annual funding available. The five mandated focus areas are:
Additionally, the most recent farm bill designates $25 million a year to be set aside for citrus disease research.
Priority will be given to projects that are multi-state, multi-institutional, or multidisciplinary and that include explicit mechanisms to communicate results to producers and the public. Matching funds at least equivalent to the grant amount are required. The project period can be 1-5 years, depending on the project type.
In recent years, the following project types have been available:
Entities eligible to apply for SCRI funding include land-grant institutions, for-profit organizations including small businesses, non-profit organizations, private institutions of higher education, and State Agricultural Experiment Stations.
Fiscal Year 2014, was the first year that applicants had to submit a Stakeholder Relevance Statement (SRS). SRS are required for all project types. Only those applicants who submit a high scoring SRS, judged by a specialty crop industry relevancy panel, are allowed to submit a full application. The elements of the SRS that will be evaluated include the significance of the issue being addressed, the involvement of stakeholder in identifying the issue and developing the project, the plan for disseminating the results to stakeholders, and the whether the project team represent a trans-disciplinary approach.
All SCRI applications are peer reviewed by a panel of experts in the applicable scientific, extension, and education fields.
Utilizing funding provided by the 2008 Farm Bill, SCRI invested $162 million in grants in 33 states and the Northern Mariana Islands from 2008 to 2012. Unfortunately, the program expired at the end of 2012 and no grants were made in 2013 due to a lapse in the farm bill. The program is now back up and running as a result of passage of the 2014 Farm Bill.
Examples of how researchers have utilized funding through SCRI include:
SCRI is administered by NIFA and a Request for Applications (RFA) is typically issued once a year in the early spring. Proposals that pass through the SRS process are reviewed and ranked for merit and relevance by peer review committees, with top ranked proposals selected for funding.
More information on SCRI can be found on USDA’s program page.
Read about the latest news about specialty crop research on our blog!
SCRI was first authorized by the 2008 Farm Bill as a competitive grant program that supports specialty crop research and extension projects conducted by federal agencies, national laboratories, colleges and universities, research institutions and organizations, private organizations, corporations, State agricultural experiment stations, and individuals.
The 2008 Farm Bill provided $30 million in mandatory funding for 2008, $50 million in mandatory funding for each year from 2009 to 2012, and mandated the five focus areas that still exist today. However, when the 2008 Farm Bill expired on October 1, 2012, SCRI’s authorization also expired and no further funding was provided until the 2014 Farm bill passed in January 2014.
The 2014 Farm bill amends two of the five focus areas to add other methods to improve crop characteristics, and efforts to improve handling and processing. It also added a second step to the review process for project submissions whereby a panel of specialty crop industry representatives rank the projects. This is in addition to the existing scientific peer review panel process. Finally, the 2014 Farm Bill requires more consultation with the National Agriculture Research, Education, Extension, and Economic Advisory Board.
The 2014 Farm Bill increases mandatory funding for SCRI to $80 million each year through Fiscal Year 2018. Of that amount, $25 million is set aside for citrus disease research. The 2014 Farm Bill also provides permanent baseline funding for future years beyond the life of the current farm bill. Thus the total ten-year cost of the program is $800 million.
Specialty Crop Research Initiative
|Fiscal Year||Total Funding (millions)|
|5 yr total||$400|
|10 yr total||$800|
Please note: The funding levels in the chart above show the amount of mandatory funding reserved by the 2014 Farm Bill for this program to be provided through USDA’s Commodity Credit Corporation. However, Congress does at times pass subsequent appropriations legislation that caps the funding level for a particular year for a particular program at less than provided by the farm bill in order to use the resulting savings to fund a different program. In addition, OREI is subject to automatic cuts as part of an annual sequestration process established by the Budget Control Act of 2011. Therefore, despite its “mandatory” status, the funding level for a given year could be less than the farm bill dictates should the Appropriations Committees decide to raid the farm bill to fund other programs under its jurisdiction.
For the most current information on program funding levels, please see NSAC’s Annual Appropriations Chart.
Section 7311 of the Food, Conservation, and Energy Act (FCEA) of 2008 amended Title IV section 412 of the Agricultural, Research, Extension, and Education Reform Act of 1998 to establish the Specialty Crop Research Initiative, codified at 7 U.S.C. 7632. Section 7306 of the Agriculture Act of 2014 reauthorizes the Specialty Crop Research Initiative and makes several changes to the program, noted above.
Page last updated September 2016