In an era where agriculture meets advanced technology, and global food security faces unprecedented challenges, the role of the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) Administrator is more crucial than ever. At the helm of this pivotal organization is Dr. Simon Liu.
In this exclusive Q&A, we delve into Dr. Liu’s fascinating path: from being a farm boy in Taiwan to shaping the future of agricultural research in the United States. We explore his experiences at NASA, the Department of Treasury, the Department of Justice, and the National Institute of Health, and how these diverse roles prepared him for his current position. Dr. Liu shares his insights on the challenges and opportunities facing agricultural research, his ambitious vision for ARS, and the transformative projects under his guidance.
About Dr. Simon Liu
Dr. Simon Liu currently serves as the Administrator of the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Prior to becoming the ARS Administrator, Dr. Liu held the position of Associate Administrator for Research Management and Operations at ARS for more than seven years, starting in February 2015. His contributions extend to his previous role as the Director of the National Agricultural Library (NAL), which is recognized as the world’s largest and most accessible research library specializing in agriculture.
Dr. Liu’s career has spanned various significant positions, including serving as the Associate Director of the National Library of Medicine (NLM) and as the Director of the NLM Computer and Communications System. He has also held leadership roles in the US Departments of Justice and Treasury and has worked in the private sector, where he led information system development and conducted space mission studies in support of NASA missions and operations.
In his current role as ARS administrator, Dr. Liu oversees more than 660 research projects spread across four national program areas, conducted by approximately 2,000 scientists and postdoctoral researchers at over 90 research locations nationwide, including a few laboratories overseas. His leadership is instrumental in guiding ARS’s efforts to leverage advances in science and technology and develop innovative solutions to agricultural challenges at both national and global levels.
Q & A
Q: How did you end up becoming the ARS Administrator? What did your path to that look like?
A: My journey started when I was a kid—I was a full-time student and a part-time farmer since I was seven years old. I did this until I came to the United States for graduate studies. I was a farm boy in Taiwan. My parents were both farmers and my three siblings are all farmers too. So, since I was seven, I needed to go to the field to remove weeds.
After I finished my PhD, I worked for quite a few different agencies. First I worked for NASA. I worked on three missions. One was very interesting because it had a strong relationship with agriculture… This kind of made me realize that everything I do is relative to farming.
Later on, I served as the chief architect of the Treasury Department.
Then, I moved on to the Department of Justice to serve as an assistant director, and deputy director, and director of Information Management and Security.
Then, I moved on to the National Institute of Health to become the associate director for the National Library of Medicine and the director of its information systems.
Then, I came to ARS. Through this journey, especially as I get older, I ask myself what I should do. Well, my thinking is as I move through my career, the position is no longer important. I need to support the ag industry. The ag industry brought me up—I need to do something for the ag industry. That’s why I moved from the National Institutes of Health to the ag industry to join ARS. My wife asked me why and I said, “Honey, I’m pursuing my passion.” I just feel like at my age, I need to do something for ag before I retire. I have been trying to answer the call of my soul and pursue my passion.
With ARS, I served in the associate administrator role for seven years, observing my boss to see how she did it. Then, I became the administrator. To me, it’s an honor and a humbling experience to serve in this position.
My experience can be boiled down to a simple “3 P” principle: the people, the process, and the program. This “3 P” principle has really helped to shape my approach to serving as the administrator. Over the past 30 years, I have been serving in leadership roles and the “3 P” principle works everywhere I go. First, as a leader, you need to assemble a diverse, complimentary, high-performance team of people. I cannot do anything without a high-performance team—this is critical to any job. A good team is not enough though, you need to continue to push your processes. In an organization like ARS, we have so many processes and rules and regulations, and as time goes by, it becomes important to continue to mature your process so success can be repeatable… My goal and belief is that with good processes, not only a few team members are stars, but all of them are stars. The third thing is the program, which has to be innovative. As a leader, we need to think outside of the box. We need to challenge conventional wisdom and any kind of old paradigms and adopt innovative ideas. Innovation can come in processes, research methods, research technology—you name it.
With ARS, I served in the associate administrator role for seven years, observing my boss to see how she did it. Then, I became the administrator. To me, it’s an honor and a humbling experience to serve in this position.
My experience can be boiled down to a simple “3 P” principle: the people, the process, and the program. This “3 P” principle has really helped to shape my approach to serving as the administrator. Over the past 30 years, I have been serving in leadership roles and the “3 P” principle works everywhere I go. First, as a leader, you need to assemble a diverse, complimentary, high-performance team of people. I cannot do anything without a high-performance team—this is critical to any job. A good team is not enough though, you need to continue to push your processes. In an organization like ARS, we have so many processes and rules and regulations, and as time goes by, it becomes important to continue to mature your process so success can be repeatable… My goal and belief is that with good processes, not only a few team members are stars, but all of them are stars. The third thing is the program, which has to be innovative. As a leader, we need to think outside of the box. We need to challenge conventional wisdom and any kind of old paradigms and adopt innovative ideas. Innovation can come in processes, research methods, research technology—you name it.
The 3 PS
According to Liu, organizations are all about the people, the processes, and the program.
Q: What did you farm in Taiwan?
A: We had a small farm—about four acres—that fed a family of eight kids. We grew primarily rice, yams, and sugarcane. We grew vegetables to feed our family. Everything was by hand. We didn’t use any machines.
Q: Did the rest of your family come with you to the United States?
A: No, I was the only kid to go to university. One of my sisters never went to school and the majority of my siblings only graduated elementary school. The countryside in Taiwan, at the time, was kind of underdeveloped. My house didn’t have electricity, you had to work in the field all day, and there were mosquitos everywhere—nobody wanted to study. So, I’m the lucky one who was able to study and pursue my dream.
Q: What led you to come to the United States?
A: As a culture, we all admire the United States. We all thought the United States was the land of opportunity with the best universities and best industries—that’s why I came here. This has been a very rewarding experience for me. I’m so very grateful to this country that provided me opportunity as an immigrant.
Q: Where do you want to take ARS? Are there any specific projects you want to focus on while you are in this role?
A: As an agency, we conduct many different types of research. So, I don’t have particular things in one particular area because they are all important.
We look at ways to improve crop production. We look at ways to protect crops from different diseases. We do the same thing with animal research. We need to produce as many animals as possible so we can feed the nation. We are also concerned with how we can preserve our natural resources and leave them for future generations. We also need to ensure that the food we produce has enough nutrients and that the food we produce is safe.
My vision for the agency is pretty simple. I would like to see ARS as a global leader in discoveries through scientific excellence. The vision is clear and simple. We have been a leader for many years and we have a strong desire to expand our lead in the years ahead.
There are a few areas that I’m particularly interested in. One is as ARS as an agency—we have to be agile. We have to be agile to address emerging issues in a timely fashion. In order to do so, we need to continue to strengthen our ability to quickly adapt to new technology. We need to adapt to unexpected challenges and things like climate change. Now, agility itself is not enough—innovation is the key to discovery. As an agency, we need to continue to expand our innovations. For me as an administrator, I need to expand our innovation ecosystem. I need to cultivate an innovation culture—that is critical today with all the advanced technology. There will be lost opportunities if we do not leverage advanced technology to do our research. Also, whatever research we do, has to be relevant. Our job is to deliver research to address agriculture challenges for Americans every day from field to table—especially the growers… I preach for our research to be customer-focused.
“My goal and belief is that with good processes, not only a few team members are stars. but all of them are stars.
Q: What are the biggest challenges facing ARS and agriculture research right now?
A: There are quite a few challenges we face, but I’m going to just focus on a few. First of all, there is a decline in research and development investment… If you factor in the rising cost of ag research, funding has decreased by about 33% since its peak in 2002. The United States is falling behind other countries when it comes to the investment we are making in ag research. We are behind China—they surpassed us in ag funding 10 years ago. We are also behind the European Union. Countries like India and Brazil are almost catching up to us. To me, that is the biggest challenge.
The second challenge we face is the aging infrastructure in the laboratory. At ARS, we have about 3,000 buildings in 95 locations across the country. The average age of the buildings is about 50 years old. The same challenge exists for the land grant universities. Back in 2021, I participated in a land grant university survey looking at their laboratories. The report indicated that 70% of those buildings are at the end of their useful lifecycle. The report estimated that the cost of updating these is $11.5 billion and the cost to replace them is $38 billion.
The third major challenge is climate change and the growing population. We need to increase our productivity to feed people. Climate change, higher temperatures, drought, the spread of pests and diseases, and natural disasters have decreased global agriculture productivity in recent years. As a result, consumers have to pay a higher cost for food. At the same time, farmers’ livelihoods are under pressure. This is a big challenge and as a research organization, we need to really respond to this kind of challenge.
Q: How does ARS work with other agencies and academic institutions?
A: We work with many federal agencies. One example would be our work with the Natural Resources Conservation Service to promote the best practices and to improve soil erosion, and soil quality, to reduce the loss of top soils and so on and so forth… We also work with NASA. Right now, we have a space station. In the future, there may be more travel to outer space and when you go there, you need to have food. It’s impossible to transport all the food from the ground to up there. So, that means you need to grow food in space. You need to produce something in an extreme, extreme environment without water, fertilizer, or soil—that’s a challenge. We have been working with NASA to explore the possibilities to do this so we can grow in space and feed our astronauts. Certainly, we work with the Department of Energy. We work with the Commerce Department. We work with the EPA and many others.
We also work with academic institutions. About a third of our 95 locations around the country are co-located with universities. This means that we sit on their campus because we like the proximity to work with the faculty, work with the students, and recruit future farmers. We have a collaboration agreement with over 100 academic institutions around the country.
Did you Know?
USDA ARS was established in 1953
Q: Are there any specific technological advancements or research that have you excited right now? What excites you the most?
A: We work to provide a solution to our growers and our ranchers in a timely fashion. There are a few things that I’m very excited about. Breeding different crops and different animals is a very time-consuming endeavor. It takes many many years. We have a need to breed new varieties that are not only nutritious but also able to adapt to climate change, drought, and pest resistance. One of our goals is to apply advanced technology to shorten the breeding time. If we could take something that takes a decade and shorten it to a third of that, that’d be good. We collaborate with the land grant universities, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the USAID, to develop the Breeding Insight Platform. The Breeding Insight Platform was developed to transform breeding through genomic insight and genomic selection as a part of our breeding program across the USDA. We have had pretty good success with it in the past five years… Right now, we have used this breeding platform with more than 25 species… Our plan in the next five years is to use it on 60 different specialty crops.
Using AI and machine learning technology, you can select a better variety by looking at the genomic typing and phenotyping and reducing the breeding period. This is a tremendous achievement and we’ve had early success. I’m very, very excited to see this tool come to complete fruition.
There is another area that I’m excited about. We need to protect our animals from different kinds of diseases. African Swine Fever devastated the European and Asian countries. So far, there is none in this country yet, but it appeared in the Dominican Republic and Haiti and we are afraid about it spreading to our country. ARS is conducting research on African Swine Fever and we have developed a couple of candidates for a vaccine. Two have been licensed and field trials are being done in Vietnam and it has been very successful. Right now, we are using the same thing in the Dominican Republic and Haiti. If African Swine Fever comes to this country, there will be billions lost in the industry. This is very important to protect this nation from emerging animal diseases.
In the past 12 months, this country has depopulated millions of chickens because of Avian Influenza. At ARS, we developed an Avian Influenza vaccine.
We need to feed people and provide them with enough nutrition to raise their health. We have also implemented something called precision nutrition. This is a research program that we do through Texas A&M to try and reduce the cancer rates in the nation. NIH is doing the research, but food is the medicine. We look at it from the nutrition and agriculture perspective and how we can improve it to improve the health of the people in this nation.
Another thing I’m excited about is the circular economy project. This is for the corn farmers right now. This project is to convert corn production to an overwinter system that recycles nitrogen and other fertilizer chemical compounds. This is a joint research project with more than 40 scientists from several different ARS locations and from 12 universities and from the seed private sectors. The goal of this project is to reduce the input and production costs. We also are aiming to increase yield, and productivity, and reduce the environmental footprint… If we are successful, this will change the landscape of corn production, especially with the climate change we are facing.
Q: What does the award mean to you?
A: This award means a great deal. Grand Farm is an innovative farming practice. They have a good network. They are farmer-centric. They have agencies involved, institutions involved, and companies involved. It’s a very exciting environment. They have a network similar to ARS. I like to see their network thrive. Grand Farm is very innovative in terms of its approach. To me, innovation is the key to future ag research… Grand Farm is a rising star in applying technical innovation to address issues.
Q: As we wrap up their anything else you want to say to readers?
A: ARS is very open; we not only welcome, but encourage partnerships with institutions, organizations, startups, stakeholder groups, and farmers to address the challenges we face every day in agriculture.
To learn more about USDA ARS, visit ars.usda.gov
