The Agricultural Research Service (ARS) is the principal in-house research agency of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). ARS is one of four agencies in USDA's Research, Education, and Economics (REE) mission area. ARS is charged with extending the Nation's scientific knowledge with programs in agriculture, human nutrition, food safety, natural resources, the environment, library and information services, and other topics affecting the American people on a daily basis.
ARS supports more than 2,000 permanent scientists working on approximately 1,050 permanent research projects at more than 100 locations across the country and five foreign laboratories. The service's Henry A. Wallace Beltsville Agricultural Research Center (BARC) in Beltsville, Maryland is the world's largest agricultural research complex. The service also supports more than 150 librarians, technical information specialists and other library specialists who work at the two locations of the National Agricultural Library, the Abraham Lincoln Building at the BARC, and the DC Reference Center in Washington, D.C.
The role of ARS is reflected in the Agency’s mission statement: :*ensure high quality, safe food and other agricultural products
ARS research and library and information services complement the work of state colleges and universities, agricultural experiment stations, other Federal and state agencies, and the private sector. Mechanisms for addressing state and local issues are already in place; therefore, activities within ARS focus on issues having a regional or national scope and where there is a clear Federal role. ARS also provides research and library and information services support to USDA action and regulatory agencies and to several other Federal regulatory agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration and the United States Environmental Protection Agency.
