Today, farm production has stopped growing in the United States, and agriculture research is no longer a priority; it constitutes only 2 percent of federal research and development spending. And, according to the Department of Agriculture, total agricultural production has slowed significantly since the turn of the century. We need another ambitious surge in agricultural science.

Consider the avian flu epidemic, in which more than 48 million birds were killed — 30 million in Iowa alone — because the only way to control an outbreak is to eradicate a farm’s entire flock. The Agriculture Department recorded only 219 birds that were actually sick with the flu. The $3.3 billion in losses have led to a search for a better method of controlling the virus than killing a farm’s flock because of one sick bird.

History has shown that science can solve the nation’s agriculture and food production problems, but to do so, the American system of food and agricultural research must be substantially reinvigorated. Research can tackle how to grow more food with fewer resources under increasingly difficult growing conditions. But this can be accomplished only if more of the brightest minds are engaged with enough funding to pursue transformative ideas.

While private sector research and development in agriculture have grown over the past decade and now exceed what is federally funded, this financing is focused on shorter term benefits. On the other hand, more than 80 percent of federally funded research is designed to provide the building blocks for long-term production increases to address the many problems we face in the decades ahead. These problems have been amplified by climate change and the demands of a growing global population.

Experience has shown that the best way forward is funding research through a competitive process, with projects selected through a peer-review procedure that excludes politics. There is a program in the Agriculture Department that embraces these tenets, the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative, and its research grants show great promise.