USDA is investing $160 million in a new federal research facility on Nebraska Innovation Campus in Lincoln, the only federal center in the United States dedicated to sustainable, digital and precision agriculture.

Scott Hutchins, USDA's under secretary for research, education and economics and the department's chief scientist, detailed the project during an April 28 Heuermann Lecture at the Nebraska East Union. The Agricultural Research Service National Center for Resilient and Regenerative Precision Agriculture will anchor the agency's push into digital agriculture, and the University of Nebraska–Lincoln will build an adjacent business accelerator to commercialize the resulting research into new products for producers and industry.

Hutchins, who holds a doctorate in entomology and serves as an adjunct with the university's Department of Entomology, said land-grant universities such as Nebraska play a "pivotal role" in advancing agricultural research, delivering producer impact and training the next generation of scientists.

"The sustainability and continuance of what land-grants provide to agriculture has been unbelievable, and it has been the reason we have been successful," Hutchins said in a discussion moderated by Tiffany Heng-Moss, Harlan Vice Chancellor for the Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources.

Hutchins directs operations and strategic management for major USDA components including the Agricultural Research Service, which maintains longstanding research partnerships with IANR. As part of USDA's current reorganization, the department is moving eight ARS positions to the federal Hruska Meat Animal Research Center in Clay Center, Nebraska, and two positions to UNL's East Campus, strengthening its research presence there.

"It doesn't matter who gets the credit or even who does the work as long as we're solving the problems that U.S. agriculture faces," Hutchins said of the ongoing collaboration.

Nebraska stands out both for research innovation and for Extension outreach to producers and stakeholders, he said, amplifying the university's importance to the state's agricultural sector.

Hutchins also flagged food and agricultural production security as a priority, citing threats he has learned about through his top secret security clearance. The University of Nebraska System contributes on that front through its National Strategic Research Institute, one of 15 federally designated University Affiliated Research Centers partnering with the Pentagon.

He displayed a graphic showing the steep rise in U.S. agricultural productivity since the end of World War II. Sustaining that trajectory, he argued, depends on digital and precision technologies, including artificial intelligence.

"Part of that progress will be driven by the impact of AI to sort through germplasm and sequencing and catalogs," Hutchins said of plant science innovation. "When it comes to breeding and the genome design, it's all about speed."

USDA is also honing plans for the Agriculture Advanced Research and Development Authority, modeled on the Department of Defense's DARPA initiative, which was crucial in developing the internet and GPS.

On the input side, Hutchins called for technological innovation to achieve "the next generation of weed management," and noted that advances in insect control are enabling increasingly precise insecticide applications — developments with direct implications for crop protection spending.

"I'm excited about that potential and about the fact that we can move at the speed of innovation, not at the speed of regulation," Hutchins said.

In Nebraska, he pointed to NFarms, a 3,500-acre IANR agricultural technology innovation hub near Mead, as a model of strategic research focus. The multi-disciplinary precision ag initiative includes drone- and sensor-enabled operations to lift productivity and resilience, cloud-based ag data storage and analytics, and innovations aimed at nitrogen management and agricultural robotics.

Hutchins described the priorities of the research, education and economics mission area he leads, including "strengthening the domestic pipeline of advanced degree students in agricultural sciences and economics." Land-grant universities, he said, are central to building that intellectual capital and ensuring agriculture's technological resilience.

On policy, Hutchins said USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins agrees 90% with the Make America Healthy Again agenda pursued by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., head of the Department of Health and Human Services. On the remaining 10% of MAHA issues, Rollins is stalwart in defending agricultural sector interests, he said.

IANR's Heuermann Lecture series focuses on sustainability in food, natural resources and renewable energy, and on securing the future of rural communities where that production occurs. The series is funded through a gift from B. Keith and Norma Heuermann of Phillips, Nebraska.

With the $160 million precision ag center, the ARS position transfers, and the planned research authority, USDA is positioning land-grant partnerships — and Nebraska in particular — at the center of its next wave of agricultural innovation funding and infrastructure.