Outside Perspective Shared on University Field Days

The value of international travel especially for farmers visiting agricultural sites is learning from other progressive farmers. However, those visited often gain as much as those international farmers like those participating in the Nuffield Farm Scholarship program.
Australian Nuffield Scholar Matthew Ipsen is a cereal farmer who raises wheat, barley, canola, oats and Merino sheep. He shares an outside perspective of the available research and knowledge being shared through Land Grant universities as we visited at Washington State University’s Spillman Farm Field Day.
Ipsen: “The research - the university putting in to the research level is amazing. Australia has cut back on their public research centers, so they have all been privatized or going down that privatized model. The trials they are conducting here are magnifcant. Just hearing some of the breeding and that that is happening -- it looks pretty good around here.”
Ipsen shared that as he traveled around the globe this spring and summer, he feels positive about world agriculture.
Ipsen: “If countries get it together, they will be able to feed the world, no worries. The talk about food shortages and that sort of thing -- but if some of these sleepy giants get going, they will be able to produce their own food. Which will make it harder for Australia to compete in those markets, but there are still plenty of opportunity around the world.”