Symposium Overview.

A number of significant issues are substantially impacting the agronomic sciences both in our short- and long-term future. Public support and interest in our three interwoven sciences (A-C-S) was pronounced in the 1970s and capped in part by Norman Borlaug winning the Nobel Peace Prize, an accolade he acknowledged was largely symbolic of the collective efforts of the many scientists who contributed to the agronomic and related sciences in ushering in the Green Revolution.  During this era, U.S. land-grant university agronomy departments were growing in faculty number and graduate and undergraduate student enrollment, with the latter reaching a peak of 1498 students in 1978. Now, at the end of the first decade of the 21^st century, the public euphoria and grain surpluses following the Green Revolution have given way to a world granary again at 1960s and 70s levels and a public largely disconnected from food production. The capacity for agronomic research, outreach, and education at U.S. land-grant universities has declined over the past roughly 35 to 40 years, with the number of undergraduate students enrolled in agronomic programs currently at 1/3 of 1978 totals. Agronomy graduate programs have declined or totally disappeared at some land grant universities. Today, global per-capita grain harvests are shrinking, aquifers levels are falling, soil erosion and salinity problems are rising, fossil fuels and mined plant nutrients are increasingly scarce, and climate change and associated weather extremes are increasingly limiting crop productivity. The supply of technologies and practices capable of raising productivity, increasing fertilizer and water use efficiency, and protecting environmental resources while meeting society’s demand for aesthetically pleasing landscapes and abundant food and crop-based biofuels is diminishing. The agronomy and associated programs of land-grant institutions that provided much of the intellectual fuel for powering the Green Revolution are now in decline. Such programs increasingly lack the funding and human capital necessary for sustaining highly impactful agronomic research and education enterprises. Agronomy, the silent partner of plant breeding, genetics, genomics, and such related sciences, is therefore increasingly incapable of providing the technologies and systems management personnel necessary to fully realize the genetic potential of new crop varieties. The aim of this symposium will be two fold-- address questions of public-private collaborative opportunities in research, outreach, and education necessary to address society’s critical food, feed, fiber, and fuel needs and who will fund the agronomic research, outreach, and education in the future?

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See more from this Division: C03 Crop Ecology, Management & Quality
See more from this Session: Symposium--Advancing Agronomy Through Public-Private Collaboration

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