H.R. 7547 — DOD and USDA Interagency Research Act

This section directs the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of Agriculture to carry out collaborative research and development activities on agriculture and food defense, national security, agricultural resilience, feedstocks for bioindustrial manufacturing, and natural resource management. The Secretaries must enter into a memorandum of understanding that formalizes interagency coordination, requires a competitive merit-reviewed process open to Federal agencies, National Laboratories, institutions of higher education, nonprofits, and industry, authorizes public-private partnerships with dollar-for-dollar non-Federal matching funds, leverages existing international agreements, prioritizes high-payoff technologies that address current or projected threats, and implements a comprehensive risk management framework covering research security, cybersecurity, supply chain protection, and due diligence. The activities encompass collaborative research on agrifood supply chain capacity, artificial intelligence applications to agricultural data, plant and animal genetics for biosecurity and PFAS mitigation, water and energy management to reduce scarcity risks, defense-related bioindustrial feedstocks, precision agriculture and remote sensing technologies, and wildfire prediction and post-fire recovery strategies.