Under the new U.S. Farm Bill, which United Fresh and many of our industry members worked hard to negotiate, the industry will receive increasing annual investments in specialty crop research over next 10 years. The first of these annual allocations was announced today. Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer announced that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has awarded more than $28 million to further study critical specialty crop agriculture issues through the Specialty Crop Research Initiative. A total of $28,365,000 was disseminated in 27 grants to universities and partner research facilities in 17 states. Each award required 100 percent matching funds from non-federal sources, doubling the impact of the grants. Funded projects will address research and extension needs for crops that span the entire spectrum of specialty crops and, with few exceptions, the projects of award recipients addressed key needs in more than a single crop. Established by the 2008 Farm Bill, SCRI supports the specialty crop industry by developing and distributing science-based knowledge and assets to address the needs of specific crops and their regions in the following five areas of focus: plant breeding, genetics and genomics; pests and diseases; production efficiency, productivity and profitability; innovation and technologies and food safety.