Texas A&M Agrilife Extension Service

Texas A&M Agrilife Extension Service, a child entity of The Texas A&M University System and the 1862 land-grant extension component headquartered in College Station, Texas, operates as a federal grant recipient (89% of recent awards) and, selectively, a subgrantee. The organization delivers applied agricultural research, extension education, pest and disease surveillance, nutrition and food safety programming, youth development, and natural resource management services across Texas and to federal agencies; it does not hold federal contracts as a prime but participates as a subcontractor on select awards and receives sub-awards from other federal grant recipients.

Agrilife Extension receives the majority of its federal funding through competitive and formula grants from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) and cooperative agreements with the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS). Representative prime grant work includes a $28.79 million Smith-Lever Extension Funding formula grant (CFDA 10.511) from NIFA effective October 2025 through September 2030, which supports development and delivery of science-based extension programs across Texas on agriculture, food production, health, environmental sustainability, economic development, and STEM education to reach approximately 30 million Texas residents; a $4.52 million Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program (EFNEP) formula grant (CFDA 10.514) effective October 2025 through September 2030, funding delivery of research-based nutrition and physical activity curricula to limited-resource families and youth; a $300,000 Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) project grant (CFDA 10.310) from NIFA awarded May 2026, supporting evaluation of a drought-resilient double cover-cropping system for cotton and cowpea with integrated extension outreach; and recurring APHIS cooperative agreements for early detection and surveillance of exotic citrus diseases (citrus greening, citrus canker), cotton pests (cotton seed bug), grain pests (corn and wheat pathogens), and rice pests across Texas, valued at $127,189 to $1.25 million per award. Recent awards also include a $467,551 NSF Engineering grant (CFDA 47.041) on satellite remote sensing and climate emissions assessment for manure management on animal feeding operations; a $325,000 Crop Protection and Pest Management competitive grant (CFDA 10.329) on machine learning and AI-driven predictive models for aflatoxin and fumonisin outbreaks in corn; a $750,000 project grant from USDA's Office of Advocacy and Outreach (CFDA 10.443) to assist veteran farmers and ranchers in Texas with agriculture production training and USDA program access; and a $664,786 cooperative agreement with FEMA's Cooperating Technical Partners Program for flood mapping, risk assessment, and community resilience activities.

Customer concentration is heavily weighted toward USDA agencies. The Department of Agriculture's NIFA and APHIS accounts for the plurality of awards by count (232 and 126 awards respectively across multiple NIFA sub-institutes), with Environmental Protection Agency Region 6 (23 awards) and multiple other federal agencies accounting for smaller shares. The top five funding agencies by award count represent approximately 69% of recent awards. The combined potential value across all awards is $2.3 million, though obligated dollars reach $911.7 million, indicating substantial retrospective funding across a long award history. Activity has grown in recent years—from 29 awards in 2022 to 55 in 2024—with 40 awards reaching completion inside the next twenty-four months, creating recompete opportunity.

Agrilife Extension operates as a prime recipient on formula grants (Smith-Lever, EFNEP, Renewable Resources Extension Act) and competitive project grants from NIFA, as well as cooperative agreements with APHIS for plant and animal health surveillance. In its subgrantee role, the organization receives sub-awards from prime grantees including Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (wildlife technical guidance programs), Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (watershed protection and water quality monitoring), Texas Department of Agriculture (specialty crop research and viticulture), Auburn University (OneOp military families programming), Clemson University (citrus disease-resistant variety evaluation), and the CCOF Foundation (organic agriculture mentor training and market development). Agrilife Extension also serves as a subcontractor to Booz Allen Hamilton on a Department of Defense Legacy Program environmental management and restoration support task, though contract work represents a minimal share of the overall portfolio.

The portfolio reflects Agrilife Extension's identity as a land-grant institution's extension arm: nearly all prime awards are formula grants or cooperative agreements with USDA and other agricultural or environmental agencies, delivered as educational programming, field research, surveillance, and technical assistance rather than as procurement of goods or services. Recent activity targets agricultural resilience (drought-tolerant cropping, water use efficiency in rice, fire management), pest and disease early detection (cooperative agricultural pest surveys, citrus health response), nutrition security for low-income populations (EFNEP in 11 urban Texas counties), workforce development (veteran farmer training, agricultural science career pathways, food animal medicine education), natural resource conservation (prescribed burning capacity, grazing management, green infrastructure), and military resilience (military readiness installation support, military families programming). The organization's federal footprint is concentrated in science-based extension and outreach, with limited involvement in federal contracting vehicles; sub-award participation reflects collaborative relationships with state agencies, other universities, and nonprofit partners to amplify delivery of federal-funded educational and research initiatives.