Madison, Wisconsin, USA
February 16, 2012
It's the vicious cycle of funding-- dollars dropping, in this particular case, for ag-related research. The drop leads to declines in faculty and staff. Those declines ultimately impact student enrollment, leading to a shortage in qualified graduates. "Obviously if you've had a 30% reduction in funding, you don't have the support staff or the operating budget. And so programs are affected," says Colorado State University Agricultural Experiment Station Director Lee Sommers, who is also an American Society of Agronomy and Soil Science Society of America Fellow.
In these times of funding cuts for agronomic research, the key word is quickly becoming, collaboration. These new partnerships, never thought possible in the past, are already infusing public research and extension programs with the needed money to boost the legitimacy of work being done by both companies and universities. University of Minnesota Agronomy Professor, and American Society of Agronomy and Crop Science Society of America Fellow Vernon Cardwell calls it crucial to science and technology developments. "We need the public and private partnerships. Agribusiness won't survive without it," says Cardwell.
Humanity may not survive without these partnerships either, but many new relationships are already strengthening the agriculture community and its future.
Learn more about public and private collaboration and who's involved, in the indepth story to be featured in CSA News Magazine's March edition, not yet out, by going to this link:
https://www.agronomy.org/files/publications/csa-news/public-private-collaboration.pdf
Interested in talking to someone involved in this type of partnership; the pro's and con's of it?
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