I know that universities doing research on food, etc. are closing down those departments. Even some GOP members are getting nervous about the impact on their state schools. Semafor had a report today about US scientists applying in large numbers to some German research group (that, ironically enough, had been created to assist German scientists to emigrate to the US after the Nazis took over). We obviously made the decision to outsource R&D to universities after WWII. That's over. What is left to fill the void?
If the heads of agencies want to assess who is doing a good job and should be kept, fine. Allowing some tech bros to do it via an algorithm has its limits as we have seen. We have read about the "oops, we want you back" emails for certain positions.
You want to give up providing food for other countries who are too dumb, whatever, to grow shit themselves? Fine. But realize there will be consequences for US farmers and in allowing someone else, like Commie Chinese and Soviet Fucks, to fill the void. While it may not be an issue today or tomorrow, it will be a mess down the road that someone is going to have to clean up ala the upcoming sell out of the Ukrainians.
Can you point to any meaningful development that the UI Soybean lab has had any time recently? The amount of money they have to play with is a drop in the bucket compared to Big Ag and private equity that drive almost all innovation in ag.
One family owned seed company—Beck’s Hybrids—publishes more valuable research and testing in their annual Practical Farm Research book composed of data from all over the eastern 2/3 of the country—than the UI has come out with in the last decade combined. As someone who has spent his entire life in ag, the soybean lab thing is just not something that matters. Purdue and Iowa State are light years ahead of UI these days in all things agronomy anyways.
When I was at UI 20+ years ago I had classes in that building and worked mornings, nights, and weekends at the beef research facility across from AH. The research we were doing was mostly feed additive and antibiotic efficacy stuff.
The college of ACES would whore out to whatever companies they could to get enough money to keep the lights on, but it wasn’t really impactful work other than for the people who earned money working there. Grateful for that, as the $6.10 an hour I made there paid my rent and beer money. But I could have made that somewhere else and not been out feeding cows at daylight when it was 2 degrees outside.
I’m still not clear on why we are putting our food production at risk to the Chinese and Russians by slashing unnecessary college labs that aren’t doing shit.
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