(505 ILCS 135/2) (from Ch. 5, par. 2652)
Sec. 2.
Findings.
It is the intent of this Act to provide for
funding of the developmental research program that serves production
agriculture in Illinois. Illinois is blessed with some of the richest
agricultural soils and the most favorable agricultural climate of any land
area in the world of similar size. An economically competitive production
agriculture in Illinois is essential to sustaining Illinois farmers plus a
vast infrastructure of the State's input, processing, distribution and
marketing industries and financial institutions and provides the economic
base for many rural communities and municipalities.
Production agriculture in Illinois faces rapidly growing competition for
international markets, for which the basis of competition is cost of
production. In order to compete effectively, agricultural producers in
Illinois must be the early and most effective adapters of new
productivity-enhancing, cost-cutting and quality-improving technology.
In addition, in order to sustain a high level of agricultural production
into the twenty-first century and beyond, it is critical to determine the
optimum methods for production agriculture which result in the best return
for the farm and best preserves the environment and the farmland of Illinois.
The Illinois Agricultural Experiment Station's Office of Research and farm system are
essential to conducting research that tests and compares promising new
agricultural practices and products, selecting those that are most
appropriate for Illinois, tailoring them to the specific agricultural
conditions of Illinois and generating information that helps Illinois
farmers assemble them into effective farming systems, thus achieving
competitive advantages for Illinois.
Tremendous numbers of new practices and products are becoming available
because of increased public and private research around the world, and this
rate of development will increase in the future, requiring a much stronger
and more sophisticated adaptive research program. Research conducted in
the research farm system permits Illinois to capture the economic benefits
of worldwide agricultural research and product development.
The State's investment in utilization and marketing research will have
little benefit for the present and future of Illinois unless Illinois
farmers are the low-cost producers of the raw materials for new food and
non-food uses, use production methods which preserve the farmland and
guarantee future productivity, and employ some of the utilization and
marketing technologies which can be implemented on Illinois farms as
efficient production practices.
(Source: P.A. 92-110, eff. 7-20-01.)
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