Why HBCUs are looking for resilient agricultural practices in the climate

deleciousfood | April 19, 2025 | farming | No Comments

Robin Roenker
| Gannett studio

In response to growing threats of drought, extreme temperatures and other natural climate disasters, the Ministry of Agriculture (USDA) has established several financing programs to support innovative practices that could lead to more resistant food ecosystems and stages supported by science to reduce the carbon footprint.

These funds come from large subsidy programs such as partnerships for climate partnerships and its sustainable agricultural systems program, as well as the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) 1890 Programs of Graning Land land establishments, which are specifically assigned to support the work of researchers in historically black American colleges and universities (HBCUS).

Between 2021 and 2024, the NIFA provided at least $ 21 million for projects carried out by 1890 university partners of land in its climate change programs. Funding support is aggravated when the dollars examined the dollars granted to HBCU as partners on larger multi-university subsidies.

“The training of the next generation of researchers in the universities of land concession in 1890 which will lead the transition to food systems more resilient to the climate is an exciting objective of NIFA work,” explains Megan O’Rourke, the national scientific link of NIFA for climate change.

Carbon capture

Last summer, Sakthi Kumaran, Associate Professor of Research of Sciences and Soil Agronomy at the Central State University, an Ohio HBCU, began to work on a 10 million dollars project funded by the USDA to determine whether agricultural techniques and stimulated by the climate – including the use of crops of coverage and roasting in rotation – can help increase the soil health and promote seles carbon -based carbon.

“Only around 5 to 6% of American farms have decided to cover the adoption of crops, even if it is so beneficial for soil health and the improvement of other ecosystem services such as water quality,” explains Kumaran. “There is a lot of knowledge and performance gaps that still exist, which we are trying to resolve in this project.”

Kumaran and research partners of Ohio State University, the University of Missouri and the University of Missouri Hbcu Lincoln plan to work with small farmers to integrate targeted climate agriculture techniques. The teams will eventually undertake floor studies and multispectral soil detection based on drones to measure potential improvements in soil quality and carbon capture capacity that use these techniques.

“In Ohio only, we have more than 400 types of soil. As a scientist, my role is to identify where these practices will work and where they do not work so that we can help farmers make informed decisions in the place where, for example, coverage crops will do the best, ”explains Kumaran.

Reduction of nitrogen

In Prairie View A&M University in Texas, the Associate Professor of Agriculture Peter Ampim is in the early stages of a three -year project of $ 600,000 NIFA to study the lines of use of nitrogen in sorghum which can help minimize the loss of nitrogen from culture systems.

“Between 50 percent and 70% of the nitrogen fertilizers used in agricultural applications can be lost due to leachate, which leads to polluted underground areas or even dead areas, or as a nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas more powerful than CO2,” explains Ampim.

His research team, in partnership with Professor Associate Sakiko Okumoto at Texas A & M University, hopes to study plant mechanisms in sorghum and capitalize on his innate ability to inhibit the loss of nitrogen, a process called inhibition of biological nitrification (BNI).

The long -term objective of AMPIM is to find ways to identify sorghum cultivars with high BNI features which, when planted alongside other traditional crops, could serve as a low cost and environmentally friendly means to improve the efficiency of the use of nitrogen farms up to 30%.

Food and farm safety

Nineteen Hbcus is currently participating in a long-term project called Climate Resiliency Initiative, launched in October 2022 and is supported by the Evans-Allin subsidy program in NIFA.

The key objectives of the project include the study of intelligent agriculture practices and their effects on soil health; Promote sustainable growth techniques, including effective use of water; And support agricultural communities of limited and historically marginalized resources.

“We have around 18 southern states and borders involved in this study, and we are examining the effect of climate change on low -income communities, in particular,” explains Alton Thompson, executive director of the association of 1890 Research Directors. “These are colored communities that tend to be farmers with limited resources.”

Key information of the climate resilience project is shared with universities across the country thanks to the participation of HBCU researchers in national working groups, including the one that has helped create the National Climate Change Roadmake of the USDA in 2023.

“This project is very opportune, in particular because many federal agencies, including the USDA, have identified climate change as an existential threat to American food security,” explains Thompson.

Changing time, new cultures

At the Alcorn State University in Mississippi, agricultural teachers are currently at work on climate -related projects supported by USDA 15, including five awarded in 2024.

Chunquan Zhang, associate dean of the state of Alcorn for research and associate professor of plant pathology, explores the means to improve tolerance to plant stress and disease management using beneficial microbes in order to help crops to better resolve changing climatic conditions.

Changing weather changes are also an objective for Jingfang Zhang, Assistant State Professor of Alcorn in agricultural economy, who is looking for how modified growth seasons can affect the food production and livelihoods for small farmers.

Other researchers from Alcorn, including Yan Meng, assistant professor of plant genetics, focus on the development of the strain of new plantations, in particular sweet potatoes tolerant to stress.

“The sweet potato works very well in relatively poor soil and hard environments and in a limited growth season, it is therefore a very suitable harvest for farmers with limited resources,” explains Meng.

Biofuel Boosting

The research teams led by Jonathan Cumming, president of the University of Maryland Eastern Shore University Department, testing the feasibility of the switching grass as a coverage and biofuel ingredient on the ground.

Launched in October 2023, the five -year project was funded through the National Resources Conservation Service of the USDA and includes partners from the University of Maryland and Chesapeake utilities.

Multiform research is an attempt to measure Switch’s ability to carry out a soil -based carbon capture and withstand drought. At the same time, the harvested switch is adopted as a booster in new processes to transform the chicken litter – excrement and bedding left as under -products of poultry production – in biofuel.

“If we just use a chicken litter (as a fuel source), it works ok, but there is in fact too much nitrogen. So we have to put more pure cellulose,” explains Cumming. Switchgrass makes “the production of biogas even more effective,” he says.

The work could provide a double victory for the environment, as it can possibly lead to an evolving means of “clean” energy production derived from waste whose traditional use as fertilizer has frequently led to excessive levels of phosphorus and nitrogen in the soil and groundwater.

The last step in the process uses what remains after the production of biofuels as a stable and non-plus crop fertilizer which.

“It is a good mean fertilizer, much better than the raw chicken litter,” explains Cumming. “Using it, we see that we have better plant growth, which means that these plants capture more atmosphere carbon dioxide and put more carbon dioxide in the ground.”

Related Posts

Add a Comment