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Comment by jeffbee | Hacker News Reader

Can I just mention how charming it is that there is such as thing as a USDA Rice Research Center? People throw bureaucracy around as a bad word but bureaucratic capacity brings us so many positive things. Let's hear it for the deep rice state.

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I've benefitted an enormous amount from the USDA soybean research. They run soybase.org, a repository of all things data around soybean cultivars. In my experience, no other crop has a database as complete as soybase. Perhaps it's a political phenomenon? The US pumps a lot of money into soybean so other countries are not that interested in soybean research, while for example rice databases are splintered across China, Japan, the Philippines etc..

Also the IRRI which is I believe the Philippines, Vietnam, Lao and Cambodia who have the rice research cooperative agreement. They do a lot of work on Golden rice.

There's even a Rice University.

Doesn’t have to be a govt department though. India is still primarily agricultural but almost all agri research happens at the universities. Still funded by the government but they do the dual work of training the next generation as well.

Plenty of agricultural research happening at the universities-- indeed they have a whole bunch of extramural cooperations.

https://www.ars.usda.gov/research/collaborations/?modeCode=6...

But this is a big facility right in the middle of the rice belt and big fields for large research projects in cooperation with universities. UArkansas has a facility nextdoor/shares resources, and it's not too far from UA Little Rock. https://aaes.uada.edu/research-locations/rice-research-exten...

What else does it do and what cost? What is the cost benefit analysis of the rice research center?

Let's see, one of the benefits is probably that we're not all starving to death right now. Not sure if there are others.

I guess you could get rid of it to save every American 5¢ annually and trade that for a chance of a future rice disease wiping out our crops. That might make sense, in the same way that the Texas electric grid is very efficient.

Just wait until the populace at large finds out what is happening to their bananas. People will be screaming about why there was no American Banana Bureau Association

Gotta give the last President props for doing more than any President before him to try and turn the US into a banana republic.

Where is the evidence it prevents starvation? Most of the crops in the US are wheat, soybeans, and corn. The rice crop is negligible. They could use that in other crops.

The USDA ARS has dozens of labs and research centers for wheat, soybeans, corn and more[1].

[1] https://www.ars.usda.gov/people-locations/find-a-location/

That has nothing to do with the rice research. I’m not against ARS I’m debating the usefulness of the rice sector.

Perhaps, we view it as in our interests that people in other countries aren’t starving?

There is no proof of that, the fact that most crops are destroyed to prevent food prices from crashing and how milk farmers are pouring their milk down the drain is proof to the contrary.

Dairy producers in wisconsin dump milk and put artificially short ‘sell by’ dates on their packages because they need to maintain a regular flow of product out the doors (and cash flow in) to maintain their operation. Milkers don’t keep producing milk if they aren’t milked regularly.

Whether or not the US funds rice research because poor allies can’t seems completely disconnected.

That is an example of waste, the US has so much wasted crops they make HFCS from corn and biodiesel from it, there is no shortage of the big 3 crops, nor is there evidence these institutions do any worthwhile work. They gave Japanese wheat during WW2 and the Japanese invented instant noodles. There is no evidence of any benefit of this rice research, and nobody has proven otherwise.

You’re absolutely right that milk dumping, corn syrup, biodiesel are examples of waste, but they are market choices. Overproduction assures supply and keeps food prices low. It’s terrible for all sorts of other reasons; I just find it curious that you are lumping all these issues in with your objection about agricultural research. Ag is a huge field and industry. They’re not all the same problem.

You might be right that I’m lumping it incorrectly. The subsidies are the biggest problem, and I am suspecting that the subsidies fund this research, the Harber-Bosch process is the biggest driver for high crop yield as far as I know. Even without any of these institutions the US had never had a famine, so I don’t see their benefits I am saddened that they oppress native crops and also prioritize yield over long term farming such as wasteful crop rotation, and I haven’t seen signs of their benefits. I’m not against government intervention or “public good” but when I don’t see any signs of it, I’m suspicious of it as not only wasteful but harmful.

Fresh milk is wasteful, we could move to powdered milk, ultra pastuized, or the Canadian model but as long as subsidies exist they will continue this non green and wasteful spending. My point is the market choices are only existing as subsidies exist.

I don’t disagree with your general concerns around subsidies; however, I am from, and reside, within an agricultural region - and count among my family and friends conventional, urban, and permaculture farmers - and I do believe you are taking an incomplete and too narrow a view here.

Do you care to explain or show me a resource I can get a better understanding of? I know friends of friends who are farmers and the only thing I know are that farmers are pretty high tech and educated, they grow according to subsides, and a lot of their friends growing up died in random accidents around the farm.

The USDA ARS is the body responsible for the rice research center.

What would be the negative from eliminating the rice research center?

Rice is the third-largest grain crop in the country. The US is the fifth-largest exporter of rice on Earth. "Negligible" is a ridiculous descriptor.

> Let's see, one of the benefits is probably that we're not all starving to death right now.

This right here. Our short-sighted attitude towards fundamental public infrastructure like this never ceases to amaze me.

The US relies on corn, soybeans and wheat. The rice research doesn’t show any evidence of functionality.

What was the cost benefit analysis of quantum mechanics related research before it became one of the building blocks of many modern technologies?

Rice is quite literally the only reason the earth can support 7 billion people. Its cost benefit analysis is making sure we don't all die.

Well, no, we've already got rice. Maybe these people are making it better, but just the fact that rice is valuable doesn't justify anything on its own.

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