§7613 Relevance and Merit of Agricultural Research, Extension, and Education Funded by the Department

Summary

Requires the Secretary to set up scientific peer review and relevance/merit review for every competitive agricultural research, extension, or education grant run by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture. Those review systems must not take matching funds into account. The Secretary must work with the Advisory Board when making the merit review rules on an ongoing basis. The Advisory Board must each year check that funded activities match the priorities in section 7612(a) and that funding levels are enough. The Secretary must use the Advisory Board’s review when writing requests for proposals and judging applications, and must ask people who do or use agricultural research for feedback on the prior year’s requests. All Department research must get scientific peer review. Panels must check every research activity at least once every 5 years for scientific quality and relevance. If the work is in the Department’s research, education, and economics mission area, panels must also consider the priorities in section 7612 and whether the work has national or multistate importance. Panels must be made of scientific experts, mostly people who are not agency employees, and should use college and university scientists when possible. Panel results go to the Advisory Board. Starting October 1, 1999, 1862, 1890, and 1994 institutions and Hispanic-serving agricultural colleges must have and use a merit-review process to get certain funds.