FORT COLLINS — Colorado State University’s AgNext Project is not only about agriculture in the future, it’s also about how agriculture can shape the future and how it can contribute to the world through sustainability research and practice.
AgNext’s team works with the “entire livestock value chain to produce new solutions that help move the industry toward a sustainable future,” according to its website.
“Our faculty are experts in economic health and ag in general, and we research strategies that real ranchers, farmers and food processors in the industry can implement to improve sustainability of food production,” Kim Stackhouse-Lawson, director of AgNext, said in an interview. “We have a team of the best scientists in the world.”
The AgNext program focuses on resiliency, efficiency and regeneracy, according to its website. That is to say they seek to create stronger communities while increasing food security, create more efficient and safe supply chains, and replenish “natural resources that are critical to animal agriculture production through adaptive management that benefits the ecosystem.”
Part of that work involves real-world issues and problem solving in the agriculture community through its Industry Innovation Working Group, made up of ranchers, farmers, dairy operators, financiers, veterinarians and industry professionals throughout the animal agriculture industry.
“We look at innovative ways to support profitable producers and industries and we support those rural communities in which our food systems are built on. That nexus of improving the health of the animal and the environment, assuring profitability for producers, and focusing on that rural community component is so important. There’s not another group in the country that does that we do,” Stackhouse-Lawson said in a video of their program.
The group’s research spans multiple areas, such as invasive species control to help inform ranchers of new threats, climate change and its effects on the cattle and dairy cow industry, intensive grazing, feedlot, and dairy systems, and economics within the industry. Download the 2023 AgNext Research Report to see the studies.
Current research includes cattle and climate change, agrivoltaics research, soil moisture monitoring, and there’s even one study to see if growing peas in the winter can help the Colorado River.
Sara Place, an associate professor of feedlot systems, added: “AgNext is a new and exciting initiative at CSU with a multidisciplinary research approach, and we’re excited because it’s right into the land grant mission that’s relative from industry, learning and sharing back to the industry and that’s a unique thing that takes place as compared to many universities.”
