Legislators and governors have scaled back funding for state universities in recent years, and one result, says the New Food Economy, is that industry funding has become more important. “And with industry money comes industry priorities. Agribusiness has funded research that has advanced its interests and suppressed research that undermines its ability to chase unfettered growth.”
“Interviews with researchers across the U.S. revealed stories of industry pressure on individuals, university deans, and state legislatures to follow an agenda that prioritizes business over human health and the environment,” write Kate Cox and H. Claire Brown. As an example, they point to the decision in 2017 by Iowa legislators and Gov. Terry Branstad to eliminate funding for the Aldo Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture. “It left the institution alive in name only.”
John Merchant, former dean of the University of Iowa’s school of public health, said farm-group opposition in 2002 prompted Iowa State University to back away from a report on the impact of factory farms on air quality. Bob Martin, from Johns Hopkins University, said that when he studied the role of antibiotics in meat production, researchers were afraid to be associated with it. “We were approached every time we went near a land-grant school — Iowa State, N.C. State, University of Arkansas. Professors would pull us aside and say they’re under enormous pressure when they get industry funding to kind of cater their research to that,” said Martin.
The New Food Economy says “a number of researchers” have reported experiences that ranged from “seeing their published work undermined in industry magazines, to being discouraged from conducting certain research, feeling undermined by their own deans, and one person was even driven out of the field entirely.”