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“The dairy industry is a significant contributor to Missouri’s economy. According to USDA Economic Research Service, in 2020, Missouri generated $195 million in cash milk receipts.”
Garrett Hawkins
Missouri Farm Bureau
Northwest’s School of Agricultural Sciences is one of the largest in the Midwest, serving nearly 500 students annually in seven undergraduate and three graduate programs. One of the key agricultural resources at Northwest is the R.T. Wright Laboratory Farm, a fully-functioning 448-acre facility with a 100+ cow-calf beef enterprise, farrow-to-finish swine operation, 70+ cow herd dairy, and row crop production.
The R.T. Wright Farm provides a critical resource for hands-on, experiential learning for agricultural science students, and is home to the Agricultural Learning Center (ALC), a new academic agriculture building opened in 2021, featuring laboratories, food processing kitchen, classrooms, and exposition space.
Northwest is proposing to expand and enhance its dairy processing, and production facilities and programming to recruit additional students into the dairy industry, provide regional producers with exposure and education to the latest dairy technology and trends, and demonstrate the economic impact of on farm, value-added dairy products originating from small dairy producers.
The project will complete the build-out of the space already allocated in the Agricultural Learning Center and install micro-creamery equipment to allow for the processing of raw milk into consumable dairy products.
“The completion of the micro-creamery will allow students to get the training and hands-on experience so desperately needed in dairy processing and food sciences. The proposed dairy facilities improvements can showcase the modem technologies dairy farmers are using today to better care for their animals and improve efficiencies of our natural resources. This will help bridge the gap between consumers and dairy farmers. These updates will prepare students to be "job ready-day one" to enter new and exciting careers in the Missouri dairy industry.”
Ron Grusenmeyer
Midwest Dairy
Northwest Foundation, Inc.
660.562.1248
advance@nwmissouri.edu
