Two labs at Kansas State University that work on global food security are scheduled to shut down in less than a month because the Trump administration has cut off funding.
K-State will shed about 10 jobs. Abroad, hundreds of low-income students that were recruited to advance sustainable agriculture in their countries will lose funding to go to college.
The two Feed the Future Innovation Labs will close on April 12, K-State announced in a news release. The closures are related to the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID.
One of the two labs searches for environmentally-sound ways to increase food yields and farmer profitability.
That lab was working in developing nations to help farmers there while benefiting K-State’s crop breeding program that develops heat and drought tolerant cultivars of wheat, sorghum and soybeans.
The lab was paying for about 275 students in very low-income countries to study agricultural techniques in their countries. This includes 120 undergraduate and 30 master's students in Haiti, and more in Cambodia, Ethiopia and Guatemala.
“ It’s devastating, it’s sad and it’s really heartbreaking,” said professor Vara Prasad, director of the Climate Resilient Sustainable Intensification Innovation Lab. “We are talking about students, their dreams, their degrees and the livelihoods of people.”
The students generally are supporting many family members and they were learning valuable techniques to feed their communities. Now Prasad fears they will not have the resources to finish their degrees.
The lab hustled to find a way to continue its work, but the financial burden was too high.
That’s partly because the lab has more than $500 million in unpaid bills because USAID never reimbursed it for work dating back to October.
Normally this happens quarterly, but the Trump administration shut down the payment portal and so it appears that in addition to losing future funding, the lab won’t receive those reimbursements for the past several months.
“Food security is a national security issue,” Prasad said. “When people don't have food to eat and they are the most vulnerable people, they are the people who are recruitment grounds for antisocial elements.”
The other lab that will close at K-State studies genes in sorghum, millet, wheat and rice that can help varieties of these crops better handle heat, drought, diseases and pests. USAID issued a stop-work order to that lab, but hasn’t followed up with a formal grant termination.
Still, the Climate Resilient Cereals Innovation Lab will run out of money to pay staff in April unless the federal government restores the flow of dollars.
Professor Timothy Dalton is interim director of the lab, which was working on rice resistance to a common disease hurting farmers all over the world.
“All of these viruses are moving around the world just like COVID did,” he said. “Our goal is to get out ahead of these problems for the benefit of U.S. farmers – in addition to those direct benefits to other farmers around the world.”
He called losing that mutual benefit “the biggest tragedy.”
Fighting sugarcane aphids
Climate change isn’t just bringing hotter temperatures and, in many regions, worse drought. It’s also exacerbating the spread of some pathogens and crop-eating insects.
The USAID funded programs effectively gave K-State scientists access to regions with different extreme growing conditions, diseases and pests so that they could help farmers in low-income countries while also garnering expertise to benefit crop resilience back home.
Over the past decade, for example, Feed the Future research at K-State was pivotal in helping combat an invasive insect species.
Scientists identified genes that help some sorghum varieties withstand sugarcane aphid – a pest that was taking a particularly heavy toll on Haitian farms.
They found the gene in an Ethiopian sorghum and were later able to breed that gene into varieties that thrive in the U.S.
Since sugarcane aphids reached the U.S. in 2013, the lab’s work to help farmers in Haiti was doubly useful.
“ It had a very strong positive impact upon U.S. farmers,” Dalton said, because they no longer have to depend on pesticides to kill the aphids. “It also solved the problem in Haiti.”
The lab that Prasad directs also works to bring advances back to the U.S.
For example, it studies how farmers abroad can avoid using more water than necessary by knowing when to irrigate and how much is needed.
“The same technologies will be also useful for Kansas,” Prasad said.
Some jobs will disappear
In a press release announcing the suspension of its Feed the Future labs, K-State said the programs had “helped feed the world and improve global food systems.”
The Trump administration began cutting programs related to this work and dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, shortly after taking office.
USAID and the U.S. Department of Agriculture Foreign Agricultural Service issued stop-work orders by the end of January that hit researchers at land grant universities across the country.
Last month the administration began formally cancelling many of these grants, making clear that the funding wouldn’t be restored.
“Students, scholars, post-doctoral fellows and some faculty connected to these projects are transitioning to other projects,” K-State said in its press release. “Nine positions will be eliminated on April 12.”
K-State has hosted a variety of Feed the Future research programs over the past decade.
One research project focused on helping farmers in Ethiopia, Ghana, Bangladesh and Guatemala lose less of their stored harvests each year to weather, insects and other problems. Another project helped develop heat-tolerant, high-yield wheat varieties for the Indian subcontinent.
Since 2013, USAID has provided more than $100 million for several Feed the Future labs that were based at K-State and involved collaboration from other universities, making the school a key player in the agency’s work to reduce hunger abroad.
“This work and these people are assets to the university, state and the agricultural industry,” Ernie Minton, dean of K-State’s College of Agriculture, said in Friday’s news release.
Minton said the university remains committed to better global food systems and biosecurity – and to “helping Kansas farmers overcome current and future challenges.”
Trump officials say more than 80 percent of USAID programs have now been eliminated, an effort led by billionaire Elon Musk.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has stood by the cuts, saying the programs ran counter to key U.S. interests.
International partners are scrambling
Although the cereals lab hasn’t received a formal termination notice, Dalton called the situation “ anxiety laden,” since they’ll run out of funding in less than a month.
“On that date, we’ll really have to let people go,” he said. If funding restarts later, the lab will need to try to fill positions again, but “these are very technically skilled people, so they’re not easy to replace” if they’ve found other jobs by then.
The uncertainty hurts farmers and scientists abroad, too.
“ Our collaborators in Bangladesh, Ethiopia and in Senegal, they’re scrambling,” he said. “They’re trying to figure out what they can do to keep these (crop) trials going at least till the end of the harvest period.”
Celia Llopis-Jepsen is the environment reporter for the Kansas News Service and host of the environmental podcast Up From Dust. You can follow her on Bluesky or email her at celia (at) kcur (dot) org.
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