Doug Lederman reports in Inside Higher Ed on competition in US agricultural research. “The notion that competition produces better science is an underlying principle of the American research enterprise — with the possible exception, historically, of agriculture. Just 10 percent of the more than $2.6 billion that the federal government spends annually on agriculture research is awarded through peer review, with the rest flowing to scientists at the U.S. Agriculture Department or to researchers at land-grant colleges through formulas that have gone largely unchanged for decades.”

Mr Lederman describes the current Senate hearings, and various attempts, including that of the Create-21 group, to increase the proportion of funding given to competitive research programmes.