The Oklahoma Agricultural Experiment Station In the 21st Century.

The State Agricultural Experiment Station (SAES) system has dramatically improved agricultural production and quality of life in the USA.  Increasing world population will place even greater demands for food production in coming decades; however, SAESs are facing challenges in terms of higher input costs and declining state and federal budgets. The Oklahoma Agricultural Experiment Station (OAES) is no exception.  OAES is represented by 19 research stations across the state as well as state-of-the-art facilities on the Stillwater campus.  OAES employs 90 FTE faculty representing nine departments and three colleges and conducts over 1000 field-based research trials statewide on its research stations annually.  Research is conducted on beef cattle, wheat, poultry, swine, cotton, sorghum, turfgrass, and numerous other commodities.  Post-harvest processing and business development research is conducted through  Food and Agricultural Products Center.  OAES has a strong applied agricultural research emphasis, but is also involved in cutting edge research including precision agriculture, bioenergy, nanotechnolgy, and genomics. Research programs address production agriculture, urban issues, economic development, natural resource conservation and utilization, biosecurity, and community development.  Restricted budgets have led to greater efficiencies including sharing of resources among units, centralized management of branch stations, and increased reliance on external funding.   Leveraging of resources is strongly encouraged. To help faculty be more competitive for  external funding, OAES has invested in grant writing training, pre- and post award sponsored program support, and incentive programs.  OAES has also refocused the mission of some branch stations to better align them with the times and make them more responsive to the needs of our clientele and more competitive for external funding.