Appendix C

IdeaBuzz Submissions Synopsis and Contributors

The responses to IdeaBuzz were reviewed by staff and separated into the following categories: greener plants/crops, animal agriculture, food loss/waste, food safety, resilience/sustainable change, and miscellaneous.

Greener plants/crops (soil, water, land use, climate, plant genetics, phytobiome, etc.)

• Invest in plant-based agriculture
• Understanding soil carbon—carbon sequestration in soil
  • Gaps in science and technology, reliable and affordable mechanisms for testing the carbon content of soil
• Smart food: high-quality foods produced near urban population centers using fewer inputs
• Reinventing potato at the diploid level
  • Genetic gains for higher yield
• Financing should be devoted to applied plant breeding
• Research on cropping systems, including economics, markets, and infrastructure
• Developing hybrid wheat
  • Advanced mating designs, genomic predictions, and chemical hybridizing agents (CHAs)
• Inga alley-cropping
  • Resilient, restores depleted soils
• Soil nutrients need a pathway back to the soil
  • Industrial-scale composting
• Future of food lies in regenerating soil through organic and regenerative farming and land-use practices
• Detox to regenerate
  • Mushroom cultures to detox soil and water. Hemp also good detoxer. Plant everywhere and dredge waterways to apply silt
• Diverse growing systems based on artificial intelligence (AI) harvest
  • Move away from monocultures, and more toward diverse, organic growing systems. In research, work needs to be done on which plants grow well together, and how they can interact to benefit soil/insect health and keep pests away without using any inorganic sprays or products
• Agriculture, biodiversity, and health
• Genetic engineering for sustainable management of crop diseases
  • CRISPR, disease-resistant crops
• Bring agriculture and horticulture sciences closer to home
  • Research, development, and implementation of green roofs, vertical farming, cave farming, hydroponics
• Rebuilding soil microbial communities in agroecosystems
• Soil carbon restoration—regenerative agriculture—our only path forward
• Make vegetables cheaper and easier to eat
  • Invest in social and technological sciences

• Regenerating ecosystem services in grazing ecosystems
  • How different management strategies impact causal mechanisms that drive biological function and socioeconomic outcomes at local and landscape scales
• Crop simulation models that take into account plant genome
• Continuous investment on genomics of crop species
• Deregulation of genome-editing technologies
• Insufficient effort in developmental studies in crops
• Revitalize public breeding programs for interested plant researchers
• More plant molecular biologists and biochemists working on crops
• Opportunities in plant-based meat alternatives
• Restoration of previous grassland soils and revitalizing soils from the woods requires a return to high carbon inputs and nutrient cycling based on turnover of organic matter in synchrony with human, plant, and environmental needs
• Sustainable and resilient agroecosystems in a changing world
  • Sufficient understanding of the mechanisms behind individual behavioral change at the farm/field level, or at the systems level in response to the risks and uncertainties posed by a rapidly changing world
• Harness the power of microbes to enhance agricultural sustainability
• Biofilm control needed for crop cultivation and food safety
• Ingenuity and resiliency of Hopi cropping systems
  • Agriculture techniques to optimize the amount of moisture in the soil
• Making more water available to crops in arid areas
  • Dried and milled Agave americana plants contain components that absorb rainwater and keep it being available to crops
• Fertilizers are the key to increasing crop yields around the planet
  • Focus on cropping density, data analytics, remote sensing, drones, seed technology, cultivation tools, pest control, and irrigation
• “Division of labor” among more-specialized crops
  • Nitrogen-fixing legumes could supply all our protein, if they did not waste their limited (C₃ pathway) photosynthate making oil or starch. So breed low-protein maize for high starch or oil yields without nitrogen fertilizer, while breeding low-oil soybeans that yield lots of protein using nitrogen from symbiosis
• New tools to protect our forests from lethal invasive pathogens and insects
• Soil security
  • Protocols for measures, development of technology, valuation of soil as natural capital, evaluation of practices

• Accelerating genetic improvements by cycling of gametes in vitro
• Breeding, research, and production of perennial grain crops and polycultures
• Building a 21st-century soil information platform for U.S. and world soils
• Broadening the range of plants/animals that can be effectively engineered
• Cellulosic ethanol production
• Opportunities for nutrient management
  • Controlled delivery and management of nutrients for plant growth and productivity
• Deep tillage to improve soil hydrologic function and resiliency

Animal Ag: “Greener” livestock (genetics, feed, rumen microbiome, animal nutrition, animal health, climate, environment, etc.)

• Integrate agricultural and ecological sciences to understand pathogen spread
  • Understand AMR bacteria transmission across agricultural–wildlife interface
• Incorporate aquaculture into the discussion of food and agriculture
• Food waste into animal feed
  • New food packaging materials that are digestible by animals, fish, and/or insects
• Insects are more efficient animal feed
• End torture: Ten billion factory farm animals are legally mutilated annually in the United States without any form of anesthetic or pain relief
• Irrational overregulation of transgenic technologies
• Opportunities in clean meat
  • Cultured meat
• Harness the power of microbes to enhance agricultural sustainability
• Accelerating genetic improvements by cycling of gametes in vitro
• Food for 2050 and beyond
  • Cultured meat and other food tissues
• Broadening the range of plants/animals that can be effectively engineered
• Microbiome of the rumen: The time is right for a comprehensive study of the microbiome of the rumen in food animals, including the determinants of colonization of the gut after birth, the role of the microbiome in nutrition and gastrointestinal health, and particularly, its relationship to the animal’s immune system

Reduce food loss/waste by half (packaging, processing, distribution, consumer acceptance, etc.)

• Ensuring a safe, secure, and abundant food supply
• Expand urban composting
• Bioremediation
• Retail food waste into animal feed
• Paradigm shifts in fast food feeding and other rapid freezing needs
• Advanced meal processing and preparation
  • Aseptic technologies

Improving food safety (human health, diagnostics, irradiation, consumer behavior)

• Improving human health, nutrition, and wellness of the U.S. population
• Gain more public support for GMOs
• Bioremediation
• Integrate agricultural and ecological sciences to understand pathogen spread
  • Understand AMR bacteria transmission across agricultural–wildlife interface
• Evidence-based decisions empower food policies and consumer health
  • The agricultural, medical, and social science communities need to team up to provide factual, science-based food information in a form easily assimilated by policy makers, professional societies, and consumers
• Agriculture, biodiversity, and health
• Environmental impacts of meeting future human nutrition needs
• Universal in vitro or in silico test for the edibility of a novel substance is a fundamental technology gap in the fields of food and agriculture
• Clean food process technology development
  • Minimal processing technologies
• Biofilm control needed for crop cultivation and food safety
• New tools to protect our forests from lethal invasive pathogens and insects
• Method to rid food safety issues associated with chilled soups
  • E.g., rapid volumetric heating methods
• Nanoscale sensors for food characteristic identification

Pathways for Resilience and Sustainable Change: Identifying key leverage points in the system to effect vast changes needed to ensure success of science breakthroughs and enhance the well-being of society (education and workforce, science communication, data and data sciences/techniques/technology, systems modeling tools, new economic opportunities, drivers, demographics, etc.)

• Support transdisciplinary training grants
• Educate the population on the benefits of plant-based diets
• Adapting and mitigating the impacts of climate change on ag systems
• Smart food: high-quality foods produced near urban population centers using fewer inputs
• New ideas and modeling for urban agriculture
  • Infrastructure and services
• Strengthen the ties between breeders, distributors, and community members
  • Strengthen incentives for feedback between all stakeholders of the product path
• Advancing ag research through data sharing and new data analytics
  • Data sharing, on-farm data research
• Global partnerships for global solutions
  • ASABE (American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers)
• Research on cropping systems, including economics, markets, and infrastructure
• Evidence-based decisions empower food policies and consumer health
  • The agricultural, medical, and social science communities need to team up to provide factual, science-based food information in a form easily assimilated by policy makers, professional societies, and consumers
• Agriculture global change challenges
  • Habitat fragmentation resulting from land-use change (expanding agricultural, forestry, and urban areas) leads to biodiversity loss
• Bring agriculture and horticulture sciences closer to home
  • Research, development, and implementation of green roofs, vertical farming, cave farming, hydroponics
• Avoid framing traps: Keeping science and technology in appropriate context
  • Technologism, productivism, efficiency-based sustainability, and reductivism

• Pay farmers for multiple ecosystem services, especially smallholders
• Do not forget the consumer: Engage citizens, applied economists, behavioral economists, and communicators in the development of the priorities
• Regenerating ecosystem services in grazing ecosystems
  • How different management strategies impact causal mechanisms that drive biological function and socioeconomic outcomes at local and landscape scales
• Deregulation of genome-editing technologies
• Irrational overregulation of transgenic technologies
• Train more people in food and agricultural research
• Analytical laboratories for developing countries
  • Need for ways to get soil, water, plant, and other types of samples analyzed continues to be a stumbling block that keep agricultural programs, both research and applied, from moving forward
• Sustainable and resilient agroecosystems in a changing world
  • Sufficient understanding of the mechanisms behind individual behavioral change at the farm/field level or at the systems level in response to the risks and uncertainties posed by a rapidly changing world
• A framework for client-oriented agriculture
• A paradigm shift to agroecology: Context and conservation in agriculture
• All new technologies need a commercialization strategy
  • E.g., Feed the Future Partnering for Innovation program
• Obstacles to big data in plant-level decision making for agriculture
  • Data ownership, data validity, data standardization, data bandwidth, data availability, and model practicality
• The risks of multiple breadbasket failures in the 21st century
  • Need for and movement toward improved probabilistic modeling and prediction of multiple breadbasket failure events and their potential consequences for global food systems
• Soil security
  • Protocols for measures, development of technology, valuation of soil as natural capital, evaluation of practices
• Collaborative research by agricultural, nutrition, natural, and social scientists could reduce this knowledge gap and improve performance across the food system

Miscellaneous

• To make things simpler: Produce food more sustainably and reduce population growth
• Protein synthesis
  • Capture atmospheric nitrogen and convert it to synthetic amino acids and then protein. We should do the research to build efficient bioreactors that combine sustainable synthetic protein with carbohydrates from our agricultural fields to produce healthy, tasty, and sustainable food
• Establishing adequate weather stations for developing countries for crop simulation
• Older ideas also work
  • Organic family farming or permaculture

The committee wishes to thank the following individuals for contributing their ideas via IdeaBuzz (in alphabetical order):

Warren A., The Ohio State University

Maureen A. Absten, Natural Health & Energy

Peter Stephen Baenziger, University of Nebraska

VM Bala Balasubramaniam, The Ohio State University

David Baltensperger, Texas A&M University

Verel W. Benson, Benson Consulting

Pierluigi Bonello, The Ohio State University

Paul Brown, Purdue University

Neville Bruce

Marilyn Bruno, Aequor, Inc.

Zack Brym, University of Florida

Edward S. Buckler, Cornell University

Davide Ciceri

Keith Coble, Mississippi State University

D. Curci, Petfinder

Susan Davis, Agavesol (Pty) Ltd.

R. F. Denison, University of Minnesota

Reid Detchon, United Nations Foundation

Jorge Dubcovsky, Howard Hughes Medical Institute

William Fisher, Institute of Food Technologists

Alan Franklin, Research Scientist

Janet Franklin, School of Geographical Sciences & Urban Planning

Alan Franzluebbers, U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agriculture Research Service (USDA-ARS)

Fred Gould, North Carolina State University

Julie Guillen

Christina Hamilton, Experiment Station Committee on Organization and Policy

Mike Hands, Inga Foundation

Jean Hohl

Mitch Hunter, The Pennsylvania State University

Shelley Jansky, USDA-ARS and University of Wisconsin–Madison

Adrienne Job

David C. Johnson, New Mexico State University

Keith F. Johnson, Retired Farmer and Author

Sean Patrick Kearney, University of British Columbia

Anita Klein, University of New Hampshire

Jane Kolodinsky, University of Vermont

Michael Kotutwa Johnson, University of Arizona

Nicola Kubzdela, Student

Timothy LaSalle, International Regenerative Agriculture and Climate

Ken Lee, The Ohio State University

Daniel Magraw, Johns Hopkins University

Andrew P. Manale

David H. McNabb

Joann McQuone, American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers

Brian Meyer

Rebecca Milczarek, USDA

Douglas Miller

Roman Molas, Usida R&D Poland

William Mulhern, University of Wisconsin–Madison

Seth C. Murray, Texas A&M University

Carrie Nutter

Jack Odle, North Carolina State University

Stephanie Polizzi

Bob Rabatsky, Fintrac, Inc.

Michael Ramirez

Cheryl Reed

Erin Rees Clayton, The Good Food Institute

Ian Scadden, Texas A&M Agrilife Research

Henry Sintim, Washington State University

Wayne Smith, National Association of Plant Breeders

Mark E. Sorrells, Cornell University

Elizabeth Sparth

Brian Spatocco, Advanced Potash Technologies

Russell Stanton, Zero Aggression Project and the Thrive Movement

Ann Stapleton, University of North Carolina Wilmington and CyVerse

Vala Stevenson, East Village Wellness Circle

Elizabeth Stulberg, Alliance of Crop, Soil, and Environmental Science Societies

Theresa Swarny

Kenneth R. Swartzel, North Carolina State University

Richard Teague, Texas A&M AgriLife Research

John A. Thomasson, Texas A&M University

Michael Tlusty, University of Massachusetts Boston

Michael Twiggs

Paul Vincelli, University of Kentucky

Matthew Wallenstein, Colorado State University

Chandler Wiland

Cathy M. Wilson, Idaho Wheat Commission

Michael Wilson

Robyn Wilson, The Ohio State University