The U.S. aquaculture industry is one of the fastest growing sectors within U.S. agriculture. Production in 1990 reached 861 million pounds and generated approximately $762 million for producers. The impact of U.S. aquaculture in 1990 was substantial: final sales value totaled $4.75 billion; direct and indirect economic impact was estimated to be $8.0 billion.
Much of the United States demand for seafood has been met by imports. The U.S. imports over 40% of its fish and shellfish and is the world's second largest importer of seafood. The value of imported fisheries products more than doubled during the 1980s. Fisheries imports---some $10.6 billion per year---are the largest contributor to the U.S. trade deficit among agricultural products. Landings for most commercial capture fisheries species and recreational fisheries of the United States have been relatively stable during the last decade, with many fish stocks being overexploited. In this situation, aquaculture provides an opportunity to reduce the trade deficit and meet the rising U.S. demand for fish products.
The Congress recognized the opportunity for making significant progress in aquaculture development in 1980 by passage of the National Aquaculture Act. In 1981, Congress amended the National Agricultural Research, Extension, and Teaching Policy Act by granting authority to establish aquaculture research, development, and demonstration centers in the United States. Five such centers have been established: one in each of the northeastern, north central, southern, and western regions of the country, and one in Hawaii. The centers support cooperative and collaborative aquaculture research and extension educational programs that have regional or national application. Center programs complement and strengthen other existing research and extension educational programs of the Department of Agriculture and other public institutions.
The North Central Regional Aquaculture Center (NCRAC) was established in February 1988. It serves as a focal point to assess needs, establish priorities, and implement research and extension educational programs in the twelve state agricultural heartland of the United States. NCRAC also provides coordination of interregional and national programs through the National Coordinating Council (NCC) for Aquaculture.
Michigan State University (MSU) and Iowa State University work together to develop and administer programs of NCRAC through a memorandum of understanding. MSU is the prime contractor for the Center and has administrative responsibilities for its operation. The Director of NCRAC is located at MSU. ISU shares in leadership of the Center through an office of the Associate Director who is responsible for all aspects of the Center's publications, technology transfer and outreach activities.
At the present time the staff of NCRAC's Office for Publications and Extension Administration at ISU includes Dr. Joseph E. Morris, Associate Director, and Glenda Dike, Secretary. The Associate Director has the following responsibilities:
The NCRAC Board of Directors (BOD) is the primary policy-making body. The BOD has established an Industry Advisory Council (IAC) and Technical Committee (TC). Membership of the BOD consists of two persons from the IAC (the chair and an at-large member), a representative from the region's state agricultural experiment stations and cooperative extension services, a member from a non-land grant university and representatives from the two universities responsible for administering the center. The IAC is composed of representatives from each state's aquaculture association and six-at-large members appointed by the BOD who represent various sectors of the aquaculture industry. The TC is composed of a subcommittee for Extension (TC/E) and a subcommittee for Research (TC/R).
NCRAC functions in the following manner. After BOD approval of MSU Administrative Center costs, the Center submits a grant to USDA/CSREES/Awards Management Division for approval. To date the Center has received seven grants from USDA for monies totaling $4,920,021. Currently, four grants are active (FY91-94). The Center annually coordinates a program planning meeting which sets priorities for the upcoming fiscal year and calls for regional workshops to develop project outlines to address the problems identified. Work groups, which are formed at the workshops, submit project outlines to the Center which then solicits peer reviews from experts both within and outside of the region. Reviewer responses are presented to the BOD who then decide which research and extension activities will be funded. The NCRAC administration conveys BOD decisions to all project work groups, and those that are approved for funding are asked to submit revised project outlines incorporating BOD and reviewers comments. NCRAC then submits the revised project outlines as a Plan of Work to USDA for funding approval. Once approved, NCRAC then prepares subcontracts for each participating institution. NCRAC receives all invoices for subcontractual agreements and prepares payment vouchers for reimbursement. Thus, NCRAC staff serve as fiscal agent for both receiving and disbursement of funds in accordance with all terms and provisions of the grants. To date, NCRAC has funded or is funding 15 projects through 157 subcontracts from the seven grants received. The NCRAC annual report contains a cumulative listing of all publications or outputs including videos, publications in print, manuscripts, or papers presented from the funded activities.
A joint program planning meeting of the BOD, IAC, and TC is held every year in the early winter. The IAC with input from the TC generates a list of priority areas for consideration by the BOD. Using their recommendation as guidelines, the BOD then selects priority areas for which project outlines will be developed. The BOD also specifies a maximum funding level for each priority area. Problem statements and objectives are then developed for each priority area by IAC and TC members at the Program Planning meeting. For projects with more than one objective, the IAC ranks the objectives by priority.
The Center then organizes project workshops and announces them to potential participants. The workshops are one-day events to establish a work group that will develop a project outline over the summer months. Work group members are those who have demonstrated that they have the expertise and facilities for undertaking the proposed work in regard to a particular objective or objectives. The following criteria typically apply to those projects that are funded by NCRAC:
During the course of the workshop, individuals are asked to identify what objective or objectives they are interested in working on, what they propose to do, and the level of funding that they think would be necessary to carry out their proposed activities. Due to the collaborative and cooperative nature of these regional projects, typically no one individual or institution receives a dominant portion of the total project funds.
All project outlines developed by work groups are peer reviewed. The reviewer's comments are used by the BOD in making the final selection of projects and level of funding at the following year's annual Program Planning meeting. Revisions of projects approved by the BOD are submitted by the work group chair to the NCRAC Director. The revised project outlines are then included in the Plan of Work that is submitted to USDA.
Each year NCRAC is required by USDA to prepare an annual progress report. Summaries of the administrative operations and all funded projects that were ongoing or terminated before August 31 of the year of the report are included. Copies of these reports are available from the Associate Directors office.
Publications are available in Adobe Acrobat PDF format from the AquaNIC home pages.
Last revised July 2, 2003.
http://www.ag.iastate.edu/departments/aecl/ncrac.htm