President Barack Obama has appointed Dr. Roger Beachy, founding president of the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis, to serve as the first director of a new federal agriculture agency.

Beachy will join the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), a U.S. Department of Agriculture agency, on Oct. 5. The new agency will award competitive grants to fund research and technological innovations aimed at making agriculture more productive, environmentally sustainable and economically viable.

NIFA will replace the USDA’s Cooperative State Research, Education and Extension Service and significantly expand its research grants program. CSREES awards between $160 million to $200 million a year, but Beachy said he and others are pushing to expand the grants program under NIFA to $700 million over the next three to four years. NIFA will have a budget of $1.3 billion and 300 employees.

Beachy said he wants to use the grants to attract the nation’s “brightest and best scientists,” including those at Danforth and Washington University, to help tackle the world’s problems using plant science.

“Most of us realize that plants are the source of oxygen, clean up the environment, and are food, feed, fiber and fuel,” he said. “They are truly renewable. As we move toward a greener future, plants will play an incredibly important role.”

NIFA was developed as a result of a task force chaired by Danforth Chairman William Danforth, who recommended that Congress authorize the creation of NIFA as a way to strengthen agriculture research and to attract more scientists to the field.

“I hate to see (Beachy) less active in St. Louis even for a little while,” Danforth said in a statement. “On the other hand, I believe strongly in the NIFA. No one in the world would be a better founding director. Our board saw the situation the same way.”