Cuts to USAID are hitting agricultural research.

From Marketplace, I'm Sabri Beneshore, in for David Brancaccio.

There's another casualty from the Trump administration's dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Funding for agricultural research at 17 labs at U.S. universities is now frozen. The labs are laying

off workers, and some research is on hold. Marketplace's Nancy Marshall-Genzor reports.

David Hughes got the stop work order from USAID at the end of January. Hughes is director

of the USAID Innovation Lab on current and emerging threats to crops at Penn State.

He was helping farmers in Africa fight a very hungry caterpillar that eats corn.

And that can cause damages and losses to yield between 10 and 40 percent per year.

It depends. And we had scaled up an incredibly successful tool.

The tool? A type of small parasitic wasp that eats the caterpillars. Hughes Lab got a grant of

up to $39 million from USAID and used part of the money to mass produce and release the caterpillar

killing wasps. But that money was frozen as part of a 90-day

review period. Hughes's lab had to stop work in five African countries and lay off 40 to 50

staffers. Hughes says it is good to try to root out waste at USAID. He thinks too much money is spent on

consultants. But he doesn't want research funding cut. He says more

money should go towards science, which can help American farmers. We need a global surveillance system

for problems that could come here, because they always come here, and then respond to them

effectively based upon the training we've done in places like Kenya or DRC, etc.

In an emailed statement to Marketplace, a State Department spokesperson said the review is

aimed at, quote, restructuring assistance to serve U.S. interests.

Programs that serve those interests will continue.

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