AgNext Research and Strategic Priorities
About AgNext
AgNext is a CSU Center for Excellence. CSU faculty who are part of AgNext work together to complete research with the shared purpose of making agriculture more sustainable by reducing its impact on the environment, improving social well-being and promoting financial resiliency.
AgNext faculty focus on making the agricultural industry part of the solution to sustainability. To achieve this, faculty work with government agencies and individuals in the agricultural industry to ensure that AgNext’s efforts are grounded in the reality of day-to-day agriculture, so research findings are relevant and can be deployed toward needed solutions.
AgNext faculty are from CSU’s College of Veterinary Medicine and the College of Agricultural Sciences. They are experts in a variety of fields, including disease epidemiology and diagnostics, animal nutrition and livestock production, agricultural economics, animal methane emissions research, and outreach to the ag community.
AgNext exists to find sustainable solutions for feeding the world safe, affordable and nutritious food.
There is no time to waste.
By 2050 the planet’s population will increase by 2.2 billion, and agriculture will need to increase food production by at least 70% to meet the demand to feed the world.
AgNext is committed to continually improving agricultural practices to reduce its impact on the environment, keep food affordable and healthy for world-wide populations, and create realistic, affordable strategies for agriculture.
All food – animal or plant based — comes from agriculture. The United States is home to 1.9 million farms, with 95 percent operated by families. It’s important that AgNext innovations make economic and strategic sense to small family farms as well as large agricultural corporations, so they are adopted and create change.
Animal products – such as meat, milk, eggs, fish and seafood — provide food security for millions of people across the globe.
While food choices in the United States are diverse and are made based on a range of consumer values, populations in other countries do not have the same opportunities and choices due to poverty or limited supplies.
Eliminating meat and animal products from all diets limits high-quality food choices that provide essential and affordable nutrition for global populations. When managed correctly, animal agriculture and plant agriculture can provide an environmentally responsible use of lands that promote biodiversity, establish habitat for wildlife, and sustainably manages natural resources.
Agriculture, particularly animal agriculture, is often in the crosshairs of debate regarding food choices.
AgNext has been targeted by misinformation. These efforts take AgNext’s work out of context and inaccurately exploit AgNext’s collaboration with agriculturalists. AgNext is committed to researching and innovating meaningful, responsible agricultural management tactics for the betterment of our planet, all people, and livestock.
AgNext Research
These needs are urgent, so AgNext has created a model that grounds its work in the reality of day-to-day agriculture to expedite results and facilitate fast adoption of our innovations. AgNext works closely with others to develop solutions to problems experienced in the field including organizations that represent family farmers and ranchers, agricultural businesses, government agencies, other universities, and grocery store chains.
Without all these voices, AgNext would not be researching the issues of the greatest importance to agriculturalists, and results from the research would not be as likely to create change.
To tangibly solve environmental, climate and agricultural challenges, AgNext faculty focus their work on the biggest issues that farming, ranching and agriculture face. Through these collaborations, AgNext can adjust research and questions to be relevant, and can work to create solutions that can be quickly and broadly adopted.
Funding for AgNext research spans a variety of sources, including the USDA, foundations, private farms and ranches, and larger agricultural industries. This ensures that businesses that will eventually implement AgNext innovations and findings are invested in developing sustainable and effective solutions. As with all university research, AgNext research is conducted objectively and independently.
Research at a university, regardless of the topic, is highly scrutinized and undergoes multiple protocols to ensure the highest level of integrity. Researcher checks and balances include multiple supervisors, a university office devoted to research integrity, and other scientists. One of the foundations of sound research is that other scientists from across the globe must be able to conduct similar research and come up with the same results; when science can’t be replicated, it signals a problem with the way research was designed.
AgNext scientists are passionate about agriculture and finding meaningful and authentic strategies to improve sustainability. Agriculturists and private businesses invest in scientists because they must find solutions to challenges to continue to be profitable and successful. When businesses donate money to AgNext, that donation may fund equipment or research, but CSU maintains independent data. This includes CSU ownership of and responsibility for research data. AgNext ensures that it’s gathered and analyzed according to the highest levels of scientific standards that guides research. AgNext scientists are transparent about research results because without the facts, agriculture cannot improve.
AgNext scientists are driven by curiosity and a genuine affinity for the land-grant mission to serve the greater good, a desire to apply new knowledge to solve problems, and an appreciation for agriculture.
The university has stringent measures in place to ensure research integrity. This includes the CSU Office for Research Integrity, an office devoted to setting high standards for data collection and storage, conflicts of interest, investigating misconduct, and training faculty in best practices.
The scientific process is rigorous, and AgNext research – and all research at CSU – is objective and fact-based. CSU scientists must meet quality control and ethical requirements set by the university and by research funders as a condition of grants or other financial support.
Experts at other universities and agencies review research protocols and results before it can be published – a process called “peer review.” AgNext faculty report to supervisors in their individual departments across the university, and they also collaborate with other researchers from other universities or agencies who also must meet standards set by their universities, funders and agencies.
Government research is funded by taxpayer dollars, and the amount of funding for university research is limited.
Agricultural industries are also invested in finding authentic and factual solutions for innovations that solve problems they also need to address. If they aren’t part of the solution to issues facing agriculture, then they eventually fail as an industry. Many industries are investing in university research instead of conducting their own research as a cost-saving strategy.
The stringent requirements for university research ethics help ensure that research such as this is unbiased and results are scientifically sound, which ultimately informs real solutions that benefit everyone.
Universities are uniquely positioned to conduct rigorous scientific research on thousands of topics and work to understand problems faced by hundreds of professions. This constant quest to ask questions and seek the truth is part of our commitment to continual learning and teaching future generations.
It is not unusual for scientists – and science — to disagree on any number of topics. The scientific process is detailed and moving a hypothesis to fact is complicated and takes significant time, usually many years. Part of that process is replicating studies and finding the same answers repeatedly to prove a theory as fact.
In all fields of research – from finding a cure for cancer to formulating the perfect diet for weight loss, research results from one study to the next can be conflicting and are complicated. This is because findings are influenced by slight deviations study to study, and it’s in understanding how those minor changes impact the results where the most interesting questions and answers present themselves.
Before it can be published, all university conducted research is peer-reviewed by experts from across the nation who have a detailed understanding of how to conduct scientific experiments as well as the scientific process. Research that doesn’t meet scientific standards for integrity isn’t published.
AgNext is Committed to Sustainability
AgNext values the three pillars of sustainability: environmental impacts, social implications and economic effects. All of these pillars are important.
AgNext works to find solutions that balance all three priorities to create the highest likelihood of success for innovations and solutions. AgNext seeks answers that mitigate environmental impacts of agriculture, while also:
- Improving the social aspect of food production, which means that the people who are invested in food production are important to the solutions as well as the preservation of natural resources and rural communities. This also means that animals are healthy and well cared for.
- Ensuring that producers are profitable and financially resilient.
- Food is affordable, nutritious and available for all.