While at the Oklahoma State University Agronomy Research Station, Senior Farm and Ranch Broadcaster Ron Hays got to talk with the Dean of the Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources at OSU, Dr. Jayson Lusk, about the Agronomy Research Station’s importance, not only to the OSU campus but to the agricultural industry.
“The varieties we produce here are grown on about seventy percent of all wheat acres in Oklahoma and about ten percent of wheat acres across the United States,” Dr. Lusk explained. “The research done here goes into adding bushels in the field, dollars in farmer’s pockets, and ultimately, food in consumer’s bellies all over the world.”
While the program is impactful, it relies on 1940s and 1950s-era infrastructure, so to maintain that impact, it must be updated. “We are looking towards the future and there is a lot of momentum in thinking about how we can move forward. Now that we have the New Frontiers Campaign building on campus, we are starting to look for what is next,” he said.
Lusk and his team evaluated the most important commodities in the state to determine their comparative advantage and what they could do to shore up the resources and infrastructure needed to push research frontiers, increase profitability, and sustainability.
The research done at the Agronomy Research Center is spearheaded by Dr. Brett Carver who is, arguably, the top wheat breeder in North America. “We have a rockstar in Brett Carver,” Lusk said. “The other piece of the puzzle is that we are one of the few remaining public wheat breeding programs, meaning that we haven’t partnered with any other entity to market our varieties. That is really a testament to Dr. Carver, that he has been innovative enough that he has had that kind of impact. Next year he will have been at the University for forty years and has been an incredible asset and an ambassador for both the University and the whole agricultural sector in Oklahoma.”
The Station isn’t only important to wheat farmers, but also to beef producers in the state. He explained that only half of the wheat acres in the state are harvested, occasionally due to poor weather conditions, but most often, it is used for grazing cattle. He added, “If you look at the dollar value of wheat produced in the state, that dramatically undercounts the economic value of wheat production.”
He emphasized that OSU’s Wheat breeding program isn’t only focused on higher bushels of wheat to go into grain production, but also varieties that better tolerate being grazed by cattle and are good forage. This is unique to Dr. Carver’s work in Oklahoma.
“When you add those two commodities together, wheat production and cattle production, we are right at the heart of that,” Dr. Lusk commented.
Upgrades to the facility are adding new greenhouses to support the wheat improvement team, and an Agronomy Discovery Center which will include research and education space to host farm groups and research labs.
“Over 65,000 soil and water samples are analyzed every year through our various services, and we want to move those out here, so they aren’t having to ship them through campus and so we can talk to producers about what they do,” Dr. Lusk detailed. “We also plan to bring our wheat quality labs out to the facility here, as well. It is an effort to try to integrate a lot of the activities that are happening here, connect better with the industry and our students, and ultimately to try help make Oklahoma Agriculture more profitable.”
OSU’s Regency Board authorized a ten-million-dollar budget for the construction, and efforts are still being made to determine the actual cost of the upgrades. Dr. Lusk anticipates that it will likely cost more than the allotted ten million dollars.
“That is one of the things that we are celebrating today is the foundational gifts from the Wheat Commission and from Oklahoma Genetics Incorporated. Together, they gave six million dollars, which will really push this off of the starting block so that we can get serious about completing the project,” Dr. Lusk said.
The donations are a great start, but additional funding will be needed to complete the vision. “We are going to need some help,” he admitted. “We want to be even more impactful. We grow wheat that are on ten percent of U.S. acres, why can’t we be on twenty or thirty? Why can’t we have new varieties of wheat that are even more disease-resistant? Why can’t we have varieties of wheat that are more digestible, that have consumer characteristics that may reduce rates of type 2 diabetes? What can we do to keep improving world hunger statistics? These are the things that we can do with the help of donors, and we are looking for folks to come along and investment in us so that we can continue to produce those kinds of outputs.”
For more information on how to give to the Agronomy Discovery Center, contact Megan Smith at 405-747-1977 or mesmith@osugiving.com.
