Texas A&M AgriLife receives $18 million to advance agriculture, improve health and nutrition

Texas A&M AgriLife, the nation’s largest comprehensive agriculture program, announced June 23 it will receive $18 million in state funds every two years to support its new initiative for Advancing Health Through Agriculture, elevating Texas A&M’s lead research role after a pandemic that revealed food inequities, diet-related chronic disease and other health care issues.

Texas A&M University System Chancellor John Sharp said the initiative is the world’s first academic research program to bring together precision nutrition and responsive agriculture research to save lives and lower health care costs in a way that is environmentally and economically sustainable.

“Solving the challenges facing our food systems with this promise of health through agriculture-based solutions is no small endeavor and requires extraordinary support. This state funding is an important step forward in realizing this vision, and we thank the members of the Texas Legislature and Governor Abbott for recognizing and supporting the enormity of the task ahead,” Sharp said.

The initiative will include a new Institute for Advancing Health Through Agriculture, IHA, which will accelerate Texas A&M AgriLife’s efforts to use agriculture as the solution to the challenges associated with the nation’s diet-related chronic disease epidemic. The IHA, composed of three focus areas – Responsive Agriculture, Precision Nutrition and Healthy Living, will bring together experts across many disciplines, including agriculture, nutrition, behavioral, social and life sciences, engineering, data and computation science, and economics.

“Here, in Texas and at Texas A&M AgriLife, we are uniquely positioned to lead the research that will transform food systems to save lives, drive down health care costs, support agriculture producers and protect the environment,” Sharp said.

New Institute for Advancing Health Through Agriculture

The IHA includes a U.S. Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Services, ARS, program that will advance research to help agricultural producers harness big data, artificial intelligence and machine learning to produce food that improves public health and strengthens producers’ economic viability.

The IHA with its ARS program will focus on three key objectives:

• Develop a better understanding of the relationship between animal and plant agricultural production and management, the environment, nutrient quality and content, and human health.
• Develop innovative data strategies to advance precision agriculture and nutrition, and link and analyze large and diverse datasets using cutting edge data science/data engineering approaches, such as AI and machine learning.
• More clearly define the requirements for and the role of human nutrition in public health, focusing on subgroups and underserved populations, and determine whether/how precision nutrition can help meet these requirements and improve human health.

“While historic efforts to design agriculture and food systems that aimed to eliminate hunger and food insecurity made tremendous strides, the food systems of tomorrow must do more – more in terms of health and vitality for humans, the planet and the economy, while ensuring producer prosperity,” said Texas A&M AgriLife Vice Chancellor Patrick Stover, Ph.D. “The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the urgency of this need, and the state’s funding will help us tackle this enormous challenge.”

Precision Nutrition, a nascent science, is a comprehensive and dynamic approach to understanding nutrition needs to reduce chronic disease based on individual differences including genetics, epigenetics, age, sex, disease status, sleep patterns and other factors. Responsive Agriculture is a science-based, dynamic approach to production agriculture that seeks to respond to the needs of human health, environmental sustainability and economic sustainability for the benefit of producers and consumers. Healthy Living will conduct dissemination and behavioral implementation research to rapidly translate findings from the other two focus areas to benefit communities and producers.

“This past year has brought us a pandemic on top of a diet-related chronic disease epidemic, which has been catastrophic for people across the world,” said Stover, who also serves as dean of the Texas A&M College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and director of Texas A&M AgriLife Research. “Obesity, heart disease and Type 2 diabetes are not only primary contributing factors identified by the Centers for Disease Control in 90% of all COVID-19 deaths, but they are also diseases that are responsive to diet. As a platform for the exchange of big ideas and big data to support agriculture as a solution, we will be able to tackle this underlying public health crisis in a completely new way.”

The nation’s food supply, and the way in which it is produced, is the key to substantially reduce diet-related chronic diseases. In 2020, the Centers for Disease Control estimated that six in 10 Americans have a chronic health condition and four in 10 Americans have two or more chronic health conditions. Over 70% of adults are overweight or obese, which increases risk for diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Even more concerning is that the prevalence of obesity in children and adolescents is more than 18% and has been increasing over the past decade as well. Diet-related chronic diseases cost the U.S. economy $1 trillion annually, and in Texas alone, medical costs for diet-related chronic diseases are estimated to rise to $39 billion by 2040.

AgriLife Research relies on funding from federal, state and other entities to achieve its mission to advance research, knowledge, practice and inform science-based policy that connects and enhances human, environmental and economic health, resiliency, sustainability and prosperity across the ag-food-health value chain. The IHA is a centerpiece of this initiative. Learn more at agrilifetoday.tamu.edu.

About Texas A&M AgriLife
As the largest comprehensive agriculture program nationally, Texas A&M AgriLife brings together a college and four state agencies focused on agriculture and life sciences within The Texas A&M University System. With over 5,000 employees, and a presence in every county across the state, Texas A&M AgriLife is uniquely positioned to enrich Texas with comprehensive agricultural and life sciences knowledge and services to restore connections among people, agriculture, food, science and the economy.