USDA Rewrote Its Research Priorities for 2026. Bioenergy and Trade Are Now at the Top.

On the last business day of 2025, USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins signed a memorandum that most agricultural researchers will not read until it has already shaped the funding decisions affecting their next proposal. The document — a five-priority research and development framework effective immediately — redirects the scientific focus of every USDA agency that makes grant awards, from the National Institute of Food and Agriculture to the Agricultural Research Service to the Economic Research Service.

The timing was deliberate. By issuing the memorandum on December 30, Rollins ensured that the new priorities would be in effect before the first major FY2026 solicitations opened, giving program officers across USDA's research agencies a mandate to align their funding decisions with the new framework before most applicants had even returned from the holidays. (Granted News)

For the agricultural research community, this is not a cosmetic reshuffling. The five priorities represent a measurable shift in emphasis from the previous administration's focus areas — and the directional change has practical consequences for anyone writing a USDA grant proposal in 2026.

The Five Priorities and What They Signal

The Rollins memorandum identifies five areas that "will guide the direction of USDA's research and development investments" across all agencies:

Priority 1: Expanding markets and creating new uses for agricultural products. This is the top-line signal, and it is unambiguous. The memorandum singles out bioenergy and biofuels by name, stating that "research and development that seeks to open new markets or expand the utilization of [agricultural] commodities in novel biobased products and bioenergy (including biofuels) will result in increased demand" for American farm output. The emphasis on market creation — not production efficiency — marks a departure from the yield-focused research agenda that has dominated USDA for decades.

Priority 2: Increasing farmer and rancher profitability. At first glance this looks like a placeholder priority — every USDA secretary in memory has claimed to care about farm profitability. But the memorandum frames this priority against a specific economic backdrop: "rising input costs, inflation, weak trade markets, and overregulation." That language signals that USDA will favor research with demonstrable economic impact on farm-level margins, not just agronomic performance improvements that may or may not translate to profitability.

Priority 3: Protecting agricultural integrity from invasive species. Invasive species research has historically lived in the margins of the USDA portfolio — funded but rarely prioritized. Elevating it to the third position reflects the growing economic damage from pests like the spotted lanternfly, emerald ash borer, and feral swine, as well as the biosecurity concerns around foreign animal disease outbreaks that could devastate the livestock sector.

Priority 4: Promoting soil health for long-term land productivity. Soil health occupies a complicated political space within USDA. Under the previous administration, soil carbon sequestration was framed as a climate-change mitigation strategy — language that attracted some researchers and repelled others. The Rollins memorandum reframes soil health entirely around "long-term land productivity," removing the climate framing while preserving the scientific agenda. Researchers working on soil microbiome, cover cropping systems, and nutrient cycling will find this priority hospitable, but the framing shift matters for how proposals should be written.

Priority 5: Improving human health through precision nutrition and food quality. This priority connects USDA's research mission to the broader administration interest in food-as-medicine and metabolic health. The precision nutrition emphasis aligns with NIH's ongoing Nutrition for Precision Health program, creating potential for cross-agency collaboration that USDA has historically been slow to pursue.

What Changed and Why It Matters

Every new USDA secretary publishes research priorities, and cynical observers might dismiss the Rollins memorandum as routine bureaucratic housekeeping. That interpretation misses three substantive shifts.

Bioenergy moved from background to headline. Under the previous secretary, USDA's research portfolio treated bioenergy as one component of a broader sustainability agenda. The Rollins memorandum makes it the lead item, explicitly linking bioenergy to market expansion and farmer income rather than to environmental goals. For researchers working on cellulosic ethanol, sustainable aviation fuel feedstocks, biogas from agricultural waste, or biobased chemicals derived from crop residues, this is the clearest funding signal USDA has sent in years.

NIFA's Agriculture and Food Research Initiative already allocates approximately $33 million annually to its Bioenergy, Natural Resources, and Environment priority area. The Rollins memorandum does not increase that figure directly — only Congress can appropriate additional funds — but it directs program officers to give bioenergy proposals favorable consideration across all AFRI competitions, not just the dedicated bioenergy program. In practical terms, a bioenergy-related proposal submitted to the Foundational and Applied Science competition or the Sustainable Agricultural Systems competition is now more likely to align with reviewer guidance than it was six months ago.

Trade barriers became a research priority. The memorandum's most economically significant language may be the directive to generate "science and data to resolve longstanding sanitary and phytosanitary trade barriers." This is not abstract trade policy — it is a direct reference to the technical barriers that have blocked American agricultural exports from specific markets, often for years. Japanese restrictions on American beef imports, Chinese phytosanitary requirements for U.S. soybeans, and EU pesticide residue standards that effectively exclude American produce are all examples of barriers that require scientific evidence to challenge through the World Trade Organization's dispute resolution process.

USDA's Economic Research Service and Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service have historically conducted this trade-barrier research, but the explicit prioritization in the secretary's memorandum opens the door for NIFA-funded university researchers to contribute. Proposals that combine agricultural science with trade-relevant data generation — for example, research demonstrating the safety of specific pest management practices for export markets — now carry an additional layer of strategic alignment.

Climate language disappeared. The previous administration's USDA research priorities prominently featured climate change adaptation and mitigation. The Rollins memorandum does not mention climate. Soil health is reframed as "long-term land productivity." Environmental research is channeled through the invasive species lens rather than the climate lens. The underlying science has not changed — soil carbon dynamics, drought-resistant cultivar development, and water-use efficiency research are all still fundable — but the framing that proposal writers use to describe that science needs to adapt to the new priority language.

This is not speculative advice. USDA program officers are evaluated on how well their award portfolios align with the secretary's stated priorities. Proposals that use language from the memorandum — market expansion, farmer profitability, agricultural integrity, long-term productivity — will receive warmer reception than proposals that frame identical science using language from a different political vocabulary.

Where the Money Flows in FY2026

NIFA's total FY2026 budget exceeds $2 billion, with AFRI — the competitive grants program — accounting for approximately $450 million. The broader USDA research enterprise, including the Agricultural Research Service's intramural research and the Economic Research Service's analytical work, pushes total federal agricultural R&D spending above $4 billion.

For competitive grant seekers, the most immediate funding channels are:

AFRI Foundational and Applied Science — the bread-and-butter competition for agricultural researchers, funding individual investigator and small-team projects across six priority areas including bioenergy, food safety, animal health, and agricultural economics. Awards typically range from $150,000 to $1 million over three to five years.

AFRI Sustainable Agricultural Systems — the large-scale integrative competition that requires research, education, and extension components in a single proposal. With awards up to $10 million and a February 26 letter-of-intent deadline that just passed, this program represents USDA's highest-stakes competitive funding. The next cycle will reopen later in 2026.

AFRI Education and Workforce Development — supports training programs, curriculum development, and workforce pipeline initiatives. The precision nutrition priority creates new alignment opportunities for food science and dietetics programs.

SBIR/STTR — once the SBIR/STTR reauthorization is signed into law (the Ernst-Markey compromise bill is moving through Congress), USDA's small business innovation program will resume accepting applications. The bioenergy and biobased products priorities are a natural fit for SBIR Phase I proposals from agricultural technology startups.

Specialty Crop Research Initiative — NIFA's dedicated program for fruits, vegetables, tree nuts, and horticultural crops. The trade barrier priority creates stronger alignment for proposals that address phytosanitary issues affecting specialty crop exports.

How to Write to These Priorities

The practical translation from secretary's memorandum to funded proposal requires attention to both substance and language.

First, lead with economic impact. The Rollins priorities are framed around market outcomes — expanding demand, increasing profitability, resolving trade barriers — not around scientific novelty alone. Proposals that quantify the economic benefit of their research outcomes, even approximately, will align better with the priority framework than proposals that frame identical work as advancing fundamental knowledge.

Second, use the memorandum's own vocabulary. "Market expansion" rather than "commercialization potential." "Agricultural integrity" rather than "biosecurity." "Long-term land productivity" rather than "sustainable intensification" or "climate-resilient agriculture." Program officers may not explicitly penalize non-standard language, but they will notice when a proposal echoes the secretary's framework versus when it does not.

Third, connect to multiple priorities where genuine overlap exists. A proposal on bioenergy crop development that also addresses soil health through cover cropping systems touches two of the five priorities. A food quality research project that generates export-relevant safety data touches priorities one, two, and five. Multi-priority alignment does not guarantee funding, but it does make a proposal easier for a program officer to champion internally.

Fourth, do not ignore the invasive species priority. This area has historically been underfunded relative to its economic impact, which means the competition for newly elevated invasive species funding may be less intense than for bioenergy or soil health. Researchers working on integrated pest management, biological control agents, or early detection systems for agricultural pests are well-positioned to capture funding that the priority elevation is likely to direct their way.

The Rollins memorandum is a policy document, not a budget document — it cannot appropriate money that Congress has not provided. But within the discretionary authority that program officers exercise across billions of dollars in annual agricultural research funding, the five priorities define the terrain on which every USDA grant proposal will be evaluated this year. Researchers who align their work with that terrain, and use tools like Granted to identify which specific solicitations best match their expertise, will find the landscape more navigable than those writing from last year's playbook.