Spending on the principal federal program for academic research and education in agriculture would rise by 4.4 percent in 2008, to $700.8-million, under a bill approved on Thursday by the Senate Appropriations Committee.

The budget would rise by 1.8 percent, to $458.5-million, for extension services within the Agriculture Department’s Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service.

Earmarks would return to the spending bill, but at a much-reduced level compared with two years before: The bill contains only $67.7-million for a category of earmarks called Special Research Grants, compared with the $143.0-million spent in the 2006 fiscal year. For 2007, Congress’s new Democratic leadership axed most earmarks — the noncompetitive grants steered by members of Congress to universities and other favored constituents — including all of the ones in the Agriculture Department. The leadership has proposed cutting spending for all earmarks across the entire federal budget by at least half.

The department’s Agricultural Research Service, which collaborates with university researchers on some projects, would get $1.154-billion, 2.2 percent above the 2007 level. —Jeffrey Brainard