DOD and USDA Interagency Research Act
Summary
What This Bill Does
This bill creates a DOD-USDA joint research framework for agriculture and food defense. The Secretaries must use a memorandum of understanding or similar interagency agreement, competitive merit review, public-private partnerships, one-to-one non-federal matching funds for grant recipients, risk-management procedures, and research-security practices. Research areas include agrifood supply-chain security, bioindustrial feedstocks for defense materials such as propellants and fuels, agricultural data architecture for AI and machine learning, biosecurity, PFAS impacts on farmland near military bases, water, energy, soil, forest, and food resource management, drones, remote sensing, PNT technologies, wildfire resilience, natural disasters, and field demonstrations. The bill allows reimbursable agreements, collaboration with the intelligence community, use of unobligated USDA AgARDA and DOD RDT&E funds, annual reports with public-release versions, five-year GAO reviews, and deference to reasonable agency interpretations.
Who Benefits and How
DOD mission owners, USDA research offices, National Laboratories, universities, rural agricultural economies, bioindustrial manufacturers, and food-infrastructure security partners benefit from coordinated funding and field-testing for dual-use agriculture and defense technologies.
Who Bears the Burden and How
The Department of Defense and USDA must negotiate and manage the interagency framework, run competitive merit review, impose matching-fund and security requirements, protect producer data, coordinate with intelligence and other agencies, issue annual reports, and support GAO reviews. Grant recipients must provide non-federal matching funds and follow research-security safeguards.
Key Provisions
- Directs the Department of Defense and USDA to carry out collaborative agriculture-and-food-defense research and development.
- Authorizes competitive grants and public-private partnerships with one-to-one non-federal matching funds.
- Requires research-security, cybersecurity, supply-chain protection, producer-data confidentiality, and risk-management controls.
- Requires annual congressional reports, public-release versions, and GAO effectiveness reviews every five years.
Evidence Chain:
This summary is generated from the full bill text using AI analysis. Expand "Detailed Analysis" below for identified beneficiaries/burden bearers with clause-level evidence links.
At a Glance
What This Bill Does
Directs the Department of Defense and USDA to run joint agriculture-and-food-defense R&D, including competitive grants, public-private partnerships, matching funds, research-security controls, annual reports, and GAO review.
Key Policy Areas
Defense, Agriculture, Research, Supply Chain
Primary Purpose
Directs the Department of Defense and USDA to run joint agriculture-and-food-defense R&D, including competitive grants, public-private partnerships, matching funds, research-security controls, annual reports, and GAO review.
Policy Domains
Substantive provisions
Identified Gains
- Department of Defense
- USDA research offices
- National Laboratories
- Defense bioindustrial manufacturers
- Rural agricultural economies
Identified Costs
- Department of Defense
- USDA research offices
- Grant recipients
- Government Accountability Office
- Agricultural data administrators
Sponsors
Legislative Progress
In CommitteeReferred to the Committee on Armed Services, and in addition …
Introduced in House
Mr. Messmer (for himself and Mr. Davis of North Carolina) …
Stakeholder Effects
cui bono?How this legislation distributes effects. Mention counts reflect frequency, not effect magnitude.
Department of Defense, Government Accountability Office, USDA research offices
Grant recipients, National Laboratories
Positive-direction: National Laboratories
Negative-direction: Grant recipients
Bill Structure & Actor Mappings
Who is "The Secretary" in each section?
- "AgARDA"
- → Agriculture Advanced Research and Development Authority
- "secretary_defense"
- → Secretary of Defense
- "secretary_agriculture"
- → Secretary of Agriculture
We use a combination of our own taxonomy and classification in addition to large language models to assess meaning and potential beneficiaries. High confidence means strong textual evidence. Always verify with the original bill text.
Learn more about our methodology