News

UNL Chancellor addresses ag research funding, labor shortages in higher education

A Midwestern university official says the United States has slipped as a worldwide leader for funding ag research. 

“We need more of it, considerably more of it as we move forward.”

University of Nebraska-Lincoln Chancellor Ronnie Green tells Brownfield in the last 20 years China and Brazil have surpassed the U.S. in funding food and environmental research. “We are beginning to see the need for the reinvestment in those arenas and I’m pleased to see that is beginning to happen at the federal level.”

Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack says the president’s budget proposal includes a 14 percent increase in USDA funding with much of that earmarked for university research. “The good news is that President Biden understands and appreciates the importance and value of research and understand and appreciates that we’re not going to get where we need to be in terms of challenges we face without significant amounts of research.”

Vilsack made his comments at the Ag Outlook Forum sponsored by the Agribusiness Council of Kansas City and AgriPulse.

In a wide-ranging conversation with Green, he discussed how labor shortages can be addressed through higher education.

Green says a record-low unemployment rate (2.6 percent) is complicating an already complex issue “The difficultly that we’re having in places like Nebraska – our friends in Iowa are experiencing the same thing of acute shortage of workers and the workforce currently to fill the needs that are there and we’re seeing that in agriculture.”

He tells Brownfield students who focus on solving agriculture’s biggest challenges like emerging diseases and sustainability will have opportunities in the workforce.

But, he says it starts with research. “In a variety of areas in the agriculture sciences and fields where our students in a real-world setting, solving of problems and working on problems and gaining real hands-on experience and doing that.”

Ronnie Green: