Learning Ag First Hand

Dr. Julie McClure, a science policy associate at the Soil Science Society of America, spent two days in April taking an agricultural tour of the High Plains with Fred Vocasek, a senior lab agronomist at Servi-Tech.

Here’s a video of Dr. McClure talking about her experience.

An article about the trip can be found here, or by going to http://tinyurl.com/p3zujna.

From the article:

During my two days, I learned a lot, much more than I could describe in one article. But here are the three take away points that really stuck with me:

Farmers are highly innovative. I was absolutely blown away by the technology and precision agriculture practices so many farmers, ranchers, and fuel producers employ today. It was great to see how the basic, and sometimes theoretical, research conducted at universities is actually applied in the field.

Farmers are incredible business-men and -women. During my trip I met with many different sectors of the agriculture enterprise and one of the common themes was efficiency. No matter the field, everyone’s top priority was to make the most out of the resources available. That doesn’t just apply to productivity, but also to wise and responsible use of resources.

McClure (left) at the ethanol plant, Bonanza BioEnergy, in Garden City, Kan. with plant production manager Angie Richardson.