The Agricultural Research Service (ARS) is the principal in-house research agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). It is one of the four component agencies of the Research, Education, and Economics (REE) mission area. Congress first authorized Federally-supported agricultural research in the Organic Act of 1862, which established what is now USDA. That statute directed the Commissioner of Agriculture "... To acquire and preserve in his Department all information he can obtain by means of books and correspondence, and by practical and scientific experiments,..." The scope of USDA's agricultural research programs has been expanded and extended many times since the Department was first created. Today ARS has a workforce of approximately 8,000 employees including 2,000 scientists representing a wide range of disciplines. ARS has about 1,200 research projects working at over 100 locations across the country and at 4 overseas laboratories. The National Agricultural Library and the National Arboretum are also part of ARS.

The National Program Staff (NPS) consists of approximately 30 National Program Leaders drawn from different scientific disciplines who are responsible for managing the overall ARS research program to accomplish the agency's mission:

ARS conducts research to develop and transfer solutions to agricultural problems of high national priority and provides information access and dissemination to

• Ensure high-quality, safe food and other agricultural products,
• Assess the nutritional needs of Americans,
• Sustain a competitive agricultural economy,
• Enhance the natural resource base and the environment, and
• Provide economic opportunities for rural citizens, communities, and society as a whole.

To achieve these objectives, NPS identifies critical problems affecting American agriculture, plans and executes the strategies needed to address these problems by: mobilizing resources (both human and financial); fostering multi-disciplinary research; linking research to program and policy objectives; and communicating and interacting with customers, stakeholders, partners, and beneficiaries to insure program relevancy. Currently, NPS has organized ARS research into 22 National Programs which are described in detail on this website. NPS also works to ensure the timely transfer of new knowledge and technologies to potential users. NPS seeks to broaden public understanding of the value of agriculture and agricultural research to ensure the continued primacy of the U.S. agriculture in the 21st century.