Short Summary of today's reading: NIFA USDA-NIFA (The National Institute of Food and Agriculture) is a federal agency established in 2008 to replace the former CSREES (Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service). NIFA doesn’t perform any research by itself but rather helps fund it at the state at local level and provides leadership in these areas. NIFA provides annual formula grants to land-grant universities. The proposed maize heat tolerance research project meets two out of five priority area of NIFA: food security and hunger, and climate change. Leads by director Sonny, Ramaswamy, NIFA has approximately 350 employees. Its total research and education budget of $710 million supported 109 collaborated land-grant universities.