MSU loses millions in agriculture, higher ed grants as Trump slashes USAID

• Michigan State University grants terminated as part of broad cuts to USAID, including $17 million for Malawi education and food research
• Trump administration slashing 92% of awards under USAID in stated effort to curb wasteful government spending
• MSU defends programs, argues agricultural and food research has ‘direct benefits for Michiganders and Americans’

Michigan State University stands to lose as much as $23 million a year in federal grants as a result of President Donald Trump’s steep cuts to the US Agency for International Development. 

Project leads received a series of termination notices Wednesday for federally funded MSU programs aimed at improving higher education and researching agricultural best practices in foreign nations. 

USAID — a vehicle for federal humanitarian aid programs established in 1961 under then-President John F. Kennedy — has been an early target for Trump and allies aiming to root out wasteful government spending. 

Late Wednesday, USAID’s acting Deputy Administrator Pete Marocco confirmed in court documents that the agency was terminating nearly 5,800 grants and awards, roughly 92% of all grants funded through the program. Coupled with additional cuts to State Department programs, government officials claimed total savings of nearly $60 billion. 

MSU received approximately $23 million in USAID awards in fiscal year 2024, spokesperson Emily Gerkin Guerrant said Thursday. So far, the university has received more than 20 notices to stop work for USAID-affiliated projects. 

“Like many universities, the agricultural and food-related research performed by MSU’s staff and faculty around the world has direct benefits for Michiganders and Americans, and a loss of funding will negatively impact progress in these important areas,” Guerrant said.

Among the casualties: a $17 million, five-year MSU College of Education project boosting science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education and scholarship opportunities for students in Malawi, and several grants supporting MSU’s agricultural research in sub-Saharan Africa.

It was not immediately clear whether a decades-long, multimillion-dollar USAID partnership funding the university’s flagship food security research around the globe — the Innovation Lab for Food Security Policy Research, Policy and Influence — survived the terminations.

“It's heartbreaking, because we know these programs do a great deal of good overseas and in the US,” said David Tschirley, the lab’s director. “We’re extremely disappointed, but we’re committed to finding a way to continue doing effective work in this area.” 

Trump and his allies have slammed USAID’s work as wasteful spending that would be better spent on domestic pursuits. Prior to Trump taking office, the US government spent about $40 billion annually on foreign aid programs.

“For decades, (USAID) has been unaccountable to taxpayers as it funnels massive sums of money to the ridiculous — and, in many cases, malicious — pet projects of entrenched bureaucrats, with next-to-no oversight,” the White House said earlier this month, citing 12 of the nearly 5,800 awards the administration is ending.

In a termination notice for one MSU project reviewed by Bridge Michigan, USAID officials told researchers their work was “not aligned with agency priorities” and that “continuing this program is not in the national interest.” 

Billionaire Elon Musk, a key adviser to Trump leading efforts to reduce government spending, has gone further, claiming earlier this month that USAID is a “criminal organization” that the administration is feeding “into the wood chipper.”

Jessica Garrels, one of two principal investigators on MSU’s Malawi higher education project, said Musk’s characterization of USAID programs is “not intellectually honest.” 

“I’m proud to say that the termination had nothing to do with fraud,” Garrels said. “USAID is not a criminal organization and the Americans that implement projects are not fraudsters.”

Up in the air

The mass terminations for USAID projects were preempted by weeks of uncertainty amid frozen funding, a blanket stop-work order issued by the administration Jan. 24 and ongoing legal challenges. 

When Garrels and her co-principal investigator, Marcy Hessling O’Neil, first got the directive to stop work, Garrels was in Malawi preparing to meet with one of the 10 partner universities on the project, which is focused on boosting graduation rates in the southeastern African country where only 1.3% of the population has a college degree. The program was scheduled to run through September 2027.

The order prompted a flurry of initial logistics concerns, including figuring out the cheapest way for Garrels to get back to Michigan, suspending work and stopping costs wherever possible but keeping staff on for the time being as they awaited further information. 

“It still is up in the air about whether or not they will eventually reimburse us for that flight,” Garrels said. 

As weeks went by with little clarification or direction from the federal government, the specter of job losses loomed, along with and an abrupt end of a scholarship pilot program for 47 Malawian students with no other means to attend college. 

But losing government backing will have impacts well beyond Malawi’s borders, Hessling O’Neil said, arguing that broad cuts to USAID programs could have a chilling effect on scientific research.

“This project, and projects like this, employ a lot of US citizens who are living in the United States,” she said. “We’re here living in Michigan, spending our money in Michigan.” 

A group of nonprofit organizations suing the Trump administration have argued the move to freeze funds previously approved by Congress broke federal law and left hundreds of millions in unpaid bills for work already performed by grant recipients and federal contractors. 

U.S. District Judge Amir H. Ali ordered the administration to release funds for existing USAID projects while the lawsuit unfolds, giving the agency until 11:59 p.m. Wednesday to settle the tab. 

U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts temporarily paused that order late Wednesday, again suspending funds after the administration claimed it could not immediately release the money. 

International scope, domestic implications

Though many USAID-funded projects are spread out across the world, advocates and experts say the implications of losing field research and the “soft power” of international partnerships will be felt by US taxpayers. 

In Michigan, much of the long-term impact could be in the agricultural sector, where farmers have long benefited from USAID-funded food research and exporting products to partner countries. 

When the US unilaterally pulls commitment from programs benefiting other countries, it complicates existing commodity markets and could cut off future avenues of international trade, said Deandra Beck, a now-retired associate dean in MSU’s Office of International Studies and Programs who was a USAID fellow in the early 1990s. 

“There’s a real psychological impact here when these partnerships are severed so abruptly,” Beck said during a Feb. 12 panel hosted by SciLine, an affiliate of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

USAID has undergone reforms and revisions before, Beck said, but “the scope and the scale of the current intervention is unprecedented.”

Tschirley, of MSU’s Innovation Lab, said the research itself has improved practices for Michigan farmers. 

Decades of international MSU research on beans, cow peas, sorghum, potatoes and other crops has led to the development of plant varieties that are more resistant to drier climates and disease, he said.

It’s unclear whether MSU and other impacted institutions could find other sources of funding to continue existing work. 

At the state level, other federal cuts could put additional restraints on the state budget, meaning it would be difficult to backfill federal aid for research, said state Sen. Roger Victory, a Hudsonville Republican and vegetable farmer. 

Victory is supportive of “hitting that reset button” and seeing where the government can save money. 

Moving forward, he believes programs that “stand on their merit, have virtue to them and help our communities” can successfully demonstrate why they’re needed, noting that he’d continue to advocate for the agricultural sector. 

In the short term, MSU food researchers have been doing the “bare minimum” to maintain existing trials, but without long-term funding, “there's no question there will be lost research, and all the money spent on that up to now will have gone to waste,” Tschirley said. 

“There are many potential and actual funders of this work around the world, but the fact is, the US government has been by far the most important funder,” he continued. “That's very, very hard to replace, and it will not be replaced in the short run  — and probably even in the long run.”