Nebraska’s Coordinating Commission for Postsecondary Education has approved the establishment of the Center for Agricultural Profitability within the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources.

The new interdisciplinary center, which was approved March 11, will facilitate faculty research and conduct outreach related to agricultural profitability. The center also is charged with training undergraduate and graduate students — all to support informed decision-making in agriculture through applied research and education.

The vision for this mission is for the center to be the innovative, responsive and trusted source of ag business management research and education.

“The complex problems faced by agriculture today cannot be solved by isolated disciplines,” says Larry Van Tassell, UNL agriculture economics department head. “A holistic, systems approach is needed to address the profitability of agriculture. While feasibility and profitability of agriculture innovations have always been important, the increasing complexity of the agribusiness environment requires a holistic approach to problems. The center will unite faculty from various disciplines to engage with faculty from the department of agriculture economics.”

The center will build on strengths present in the university’s department of agricultural economics through collaboration with other research and education units within IANR and the University of Nebraska system. It aims to serve agricultural producers, agribusiness professionals and the economy in Nebraska and beyond.

Making decisions

“It is critical that producers have decision-making information that is current, research-based, specific and holistic, and that they have appropriate tools and procedures to analyze that information,” says Mike Boehm, NU vice president and Harlan vice chancellor for IANR. “The center will play a critical role in fulfilling that need.”

This new center has been three years in the making. “Once we got serious about it, the process took nearly a year,” Van Tassell says. “While preparing for the center to materialize, the Nebraska Extension farm and ranch management team in the department of agriculture economics has been developing several educational tools to improve our interaction with constituents.

“Our current weekly Farm and Ranch Management webinar series and a new effort to increase the amounts of publications and podcasts are new programs that will continue under the umbrella of the center.”

In addition, the department also is beta-testing the online Agriculture Budgeting Calculator tool, which Van Tassell says will be a foundational decision-making program that the center can build around.

It couldn’t come at a better time. “The agricultural operating environment has changed dramatically over the past 20 years,” Van Tassell says, “and it will continue to evolve in the next 20 years.”

He cites restructuring in the agricultural input, marketing and processing sectors, along with increasing price volatility for commodities over the past decade, as increasing the need for price and production risk management.

The effect of every economic decision a producer makes is amplified under these conditions, Van Tassell says. “There is less flexibility for a wrong business decision,” he explains. Farmers can no longer just focus on maximizing yield or outputs without carefully considering financial aspects of their decisions, he adds.

The center, which will begin operating by early summer, will focus concerted effort among social science, biological and engineering disciplines to provide the research and educational programs required to keep Nebraska’s farmers and ranchers financially healthy.

For more information, visit the UNL department of agricultural economics website at agecon.unl.edu.