The report recommends streamlining redundant U.S. regulatory protocols, as well as emphasizing clarity and uniformity in countries’ regulations on sanitary and phytosanitary trade issues. International trade agreements should include agricultural biotech provisions, and science-based outreach is needed to boost public understanding of safe technologies such as gene-edited crops.

Participants in the Yeutter Institute project included high-level government officials from the current and previous presidential administrations, farmers, plus academics and practitioners in plant genetics, agricultural sciences, economics and law. The Yeutter Institute is part of the University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources.

Global population is on course to reach 9.3 billion by 2050, up from the current 8.1 billion, and ag biotech innovation is crucial to increase crop yields. But, the report says, “the U.S. regulatory process threatens to hold up innovation” because the “cumbersome regulatory structure can result in duplicative reviews and is a costly burden on innovators.”

U.S. officials can help, the report recommends, by streamlining and coordinating the redundant regulatory processes for ag biotech conducted separately by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Food and Drug Administration, and Environmental Protection Agency.

The Yeutter Institute has begun preliminary briefings with Capitol Hill staff in Washington, D.C., about the group’s findings and will share with trade professionals and other interested groups, as well.

“Convening people who bring a variety of experiences and perspectives to trade policy discussions is core to the Yeutter Institute mission, and that is what we did with this project,” said Jill O’Donnell, Haggart-Work Director of the Yeutter Institute. “It’s important for policymakers to hear from a broad spectrum of voices as they make decisions, and that includes voices representing various aspects of the agriculture industry, as well as those from the Midwest.”

The document also underscores the need to remove trade impediments to be competitive globally. China has launched an initiative to dominate agricultural seed technology and innovation, and the Chinese government has put up roadblocks to approving U.S.-developed seeds in favor of domestic seed development, the report says.

Countries can use the World Trade Organization’s international agreement on sanitary and phytosanitary issues as a baseline to set uniform, science-based standards. Such a step, the report notes, would reduce complexity and complication in global agricultural trade, especially helping developing nations as they work to expand their ag export opportunities.

“The days of (free trade agreements) are not necessarily over forever, but in agriculture, we need transparency and science-based regulatory approaches as much as we need traditional market access,” the report says. Such an approach “is especially advantageous for developing countries that face a more acute need to improve their own productivity to feed their people.”

The report explains that gene editing for crops is an extension, at an accelerated pace, of trait-focused crop breeding used for millennia. “Gene-editing techniques can be a shortcut to a breeding process that occurs naturally,” the report says. “It’s a scientific way to introduce genetic variability, which farmers have been doing for decades. In fact, plant breeding dates back thousands of years to when people first domesticated wild plants.”

In the mid-20th century, Iowa agronomist Norman Borlaug devoted hundreds of hours to the meticulous breeding of wheat varieties and won international plaudits, including a Nobel Prize, for the resulting landmark improvements in crop yields. Modern gene editing for crops uses the same basic scientific method but at a far more efficient pace, the report notes. Such innovation is vital, the report says, to boost crop yields adequate to meet the world’s growing food demand.

Outreach efforts that explain the safety and importance of these scientific techniques are needed to enable further innovation, the report notes.

To read the news release covering the report, click here.

To read the full report summarizing the roundtable discussion held by the Clayton Yeutter Institute of International Trade and Finance at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, click here.

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These observations are highly pertinent and connect to another major EU commitment: becoming a stronger geopolitical power. Linking these issues, this compilation explores how the EU could—through its external policies—be an effective geopolitical power in dealing with climate change and ecological shifts.

Extensive analytical work has accumulated on climate security and mainly makes the general case for why the EU needs to take climate factors more seriously within its foreign policies. But after more than a decade of policy efforts, the EU already has a dense network of ongoing initiatives that fall to some degree within the scope of climate security. Given this, the priority should no longer be restating the basics of why climate represents a geopolitical challenge. The EU has already moved some distance along this policy curve. Rather, it should be to assess the more precise ways in which the EU is approaching climate security.

The following six chapters here assess different elements of the climate security challenge. Through these different contributions, a core argument emerges: the EU needs a broader understanding of climate geopolitics to extend and improve its already rich array of policy initiatives in this area. It essentially needs to transition from its current conceptualization of climate security to a more ambitious notion of ecological security.

To read the full report from the Carnegie Endowment Europe, please click here.

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This report challenges the conventional wisdom about how best to manage the science and technology contest between the United States and China. The United States is in a much stronger leadership position than many in the policy community assume, but requires new policies to uphold American security and enhance American strengths.

To protect against the risks posed by China and safeguard U.S. security and competitiveness, the United States must embrace three complementary policy goals:

1. Bolster U.S. innovation capabilities through measures ranging from increased funding for fundamental research to selective upgrading of our production system.
2. Tailor targeted risk management measures to address current and future security threats.
3. Preserve as many of the benefits of an open, ethical, and integrated global knowledge system and innovation economy as possible.

These three policy goals are complementary to each other —the successful realization of one depends on the implementation of the other two. Preserving openness depends on improving risk management. Risk management is feasible only if it addresses functions within a strong, adequately resourced domestic innovation system. And strengthening the U.S. innovation system will be easier if we preserve an open, interdependent global system of S&T innovation.

The policy recommendations presented in this report are most likely to succeed if they are designed and implemented collaboratively with like-minded countries. The four cases in this report—fundamental research, AI, 5G, and biotechnology—contain detailed policy recommendations. Here we present 16 policy recommendations that unify all four fields, organized under the three goals that guide our analysis.

To read the full brief, please click here

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