By Clarence E. Watson, Director, Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station

 The onset of the recession in 2008 brought a reduction in research expenditures for the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station for the next three years, but in the fourth year we bounced back and surpassed the 2008 expenditure level. In 2012, our expenditure budget was $66.3 million, its highest ever. This has been a good year for us and our faculty deserves congratulations for its continued procurement of and wise stewardship of available research dollars.

The breakdown of research expenditures by revenue sources for the AAES is 57 percent from the state, 15 percent from federal grants, 14 percent from non-federal sources such as commodity promotion boards, 7 percent from federal formula funds, 5 percent from industry and 2 percent self-generated (such as fees and sales of commodities).

We want to take special note of our relationship with the commodity boards, which will provide nearly $9 million of funding in 2013. Because of their research productivity, our faculty members have a good rapport with their respective commodity organizations, which helps both groups make progress in their endeavors.

The situation regarding the federal government's budget has resulted in a 7.6 percent cut in federal formula funds available to AAES during this fiscal year 2013. The state budget approved during the recent session of the Arkansas General Assembly will provide AAES with approximately the same level of revenue for the fiscal year beginning July 1 as this year's revenue level. Because of the possibility of unfunded mandates during the year coupled with inflationary pressures, we will still need to be vigilant in our use of these funds.
 
Agriculture accounted for $16 billion of value added to the Arkansas economy in 2010, 16 percent of all value added to the economy. Our work at AAES contributes to that value and we continue to look for the most productive ways to do so.

The University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture was honored to serve as the host institution in April in Little Rock for the joint spring meeting of the Southern Association of Agricultural Experiment Station Directors and the Association of Southern Regional Extension Directors. About 80 people, split almost evenly between research and extension, attended the three-day conference.

We wanted to be sure that our colleagues from other states were aware that Arkansas is the nation's top rice producer, so we arranged tours of two major facilities in Stuttgart. Part of the group visited the Riceland Foods plants on a tour led by Bill Reed, the company's vice president for corporate communications and public affairs, and the rest of the group toured Producers Rice Mill, led by Keith Glover, the president and chief executive officer. Thanks to both for arranging these informative tours.

We often point to the Division's motto, "Arkansas Is Our Campus," as evidence of our how widespread we are. Part of our large campus had a birthday recently. The Livestock and Forestry Research Station in Batesville, which opened on May 1, 1938, observed its 75th anniversary during its field day sessions April 16. The station became the university's fourth agricultural research station in the state beyond the Fayetteville campus. The people of the Batesville area secured the facility by implementing a voluntary tax millage to pay for the land purchase. Congratulations to station director Don Hubbell and the staff for maintaining a long tradition of excellence.

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By Mike Sisco

AAES Grants Officer

 

Legislation authorizing 2012 USDA Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) funding increased the allowable indirect cost rate to 42.857 percent of total direct costs. Because this is such a significant increase, and because this legislation was not passed until after the 2012 AFRI RFA's were published, the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station decided to delay the use of the new rate until the 2013 AFRI season (due dates beginning October 2012). AAES policy is to use this USDA rate on all industry agreements, so this also began in October 2012.

USDA's language is sometimes confusing because they state the indirect cost rate as a percentage of total federal funds. The formula is as follows:

Direct                           70
Indirect                       30
Total Federal            100

As a percentage of total federal funds the indirect cost rate is 30 percent. Since budgets are developed from the top down, the indirect cost rate is effectively 42.857 percent of total direct costs (30/70 = .42857).

Because we are ultimately limited by our negotiated indirect cost rate (an entirely different formula), the AAES Grants Office mandates the use of its USDA Budget Worksheet, which calculates the indirect costs using both the USDA rate and the negotiated rate and inputs the one into the budget that gives the lowest number for indirect costs.

If anyone has any questions about this, contact me at msisco@uark.edu.
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By today's standards, the station was a small enterprise shortly after its founding but it was a source of pride. Aubrey Gates, writing in the Arkansas Agriculturist magazine in 1930, described it this way:

"The physical equipment is among the best that can be found anywhere. Building improvements consist of the main residence, office (foreman's residence), four houses for laborers, barns, machine sheds, building for housing gin and handling cotton, and other necessary structures. There is also a scientific laboratory for all kinds of cotton investigations. All the equipment necessary in the way of tools and implements and livestock (mules) for scientific cotton cultivation are kept on the farm and the station is strictly up to date on this score."

More than 80 years later, the expanded operation facilitates research that focuses on annual evaluations of cotton, soybean, wheat, grain, sorghum and corn varieties and breeding lines. It is also the site of studies to determine the optimum fertility, irrigation and pest management practices for these and other crops.

In 2005, the station was renamed in honor of Lon Mann, who operated a cotton gin started by his father, which is now the McClendon, Mann and Felton Gin Co. He was president of the National Cotton Council of America, the National Cotton Ginners Association and Agricenter International. He received the 2000 Horace Hayden Cotton Ginner of the Year Award in recognition of outstanding leadership to the U.S. cotton industry, superior customer service and civic contributions.

The station took another stride in 2007 with the completion of the Dan Felton Jr. Building, a 6,628-square-foot administrative facility for the unit named for a Lee County farmer, cotton ginner, merchant, cattleman and civic leader. The building includes an auditorium, kitchen, offices, laboratory and library/conference room. It's attached by a breezeway to the Eastern Arkansas Soil Testing and Research Laboratory.

Supervising the activities at the station is Claude Kennedy, who was named its resident director in 2000. Kennedy, a Marianna native who grew up near the station, pursued a career in agriculture that took him to Washington as Southeast area director of the USDA Agricultural Stabilization Conservation Service and then back to Arkansas. He was a Cooperative Extension Service agent in Lee County and president of the Marianna/Lee County Chamber of Commerce before taking the resident director's job. He's also been the owner and operator of a 1,200-acre farming operation in Lee County.

 

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Equine students spent time sprucing up Whitaker Arena, maintaining the horse barn and washing and waxing the newly donated horse trailer.

More than 100 students worked diligently at the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture's North Farm located on Garland Avenue in Fayetteville on April 19 and 20. The students are members of the Intro to the Equine Industry class, D.E. King Barn staff and equine interns and volunteers who helped to make the first North Farm Community Service Day a success.

There was plenty of work to be done because the new North Farm Community Service Day followed the state Future Farmers of America judging contest in which guests from all over the state used the facility. Students worked in supervised shifts for a combined 350 hours during the clean-up that followed.

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Marty Matlock

Marty Matlock, area director for the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture Center for Agricultural and Rural Sustainability, presented the keynote address at the fourth Global Feed and Food Congress April 10 in Sun City, South Africa.

Matlock's presentation, "The role of animal agriculture in feeding 10 billion people sustainably," was part of a three-part session focused on meeting sustainability challenges.

"The challenges, opportunities and potential risks related to sustainable agricultural production are a direct result of competing land uses," Matlock said. "Agricultural production, including crops, pasture and grazing, currently utilize more than 40 percent of the Earth's surface. In order for global agricultural producers to meet the increasing demand for food, feed, fiber and fuel, while at the same time reducing inputs and impacts, we must use every tool currently available in our collective tool box and continue to develop innovative tools that address emerging problems in an efficient, earth-friendly manner. Our future success is dependent on what we do today."

Novus International, Inc. of St. Louis, a global leader in developing animal health and nutrition solutions, sponsored Matlock's appearance at the conference.

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Andrew McKenzie

 Andrew McKenzie, a professor of agricultural economics and agribusiness in the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture and the Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences, has been named co-editor of the Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics.

The journal is the official publication of the Southern Agricultural Economics Association. McKenzie will serve as co-editor for a three-year term beginning in July 2013.

McKenzie, who joined the university faculty as an assistant professor in 1998, was selected based on his expertise in the areas of commodity marketing, international trade, and futures and options markets.

He is a native of South Shields, England, and earned his doctorate in economics from North Carolina State University in 1999.

(See full article at

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