Professor: Or maybe one after?
Always hate to break up this excellent fellowship,
but also very excited to introduce our guest
and speaker for the day, Dr. Mark Bogus,
who is the new center director
at the Meat Animal Research Center and Clay Center,
so Mark I don't know how much
of your background you're gonna give.
Mark: I don't want to scare anybody.
Professor: I don't want to steal too much of his thunder.
He gives a great presentation, he has agriculture roots,
large animal and food animal roots.
Grew up in southeast Iowa.
Mark: West.
Professor: Sorry, I knew that,
southwest Iowa, very close to the Archie Clutter,
and diversified livestock background,
so name a species and I think at some point
Dr. Bogus family was engaged in that species.
He and I share a common interest,
or maybe roots I should say, in the Simmental business.
In the 70s, when that hit, all the bulls that
would have had semen imported into the US,
Mark has a more vivid memory than I do,
but he can name the bulls and show you pictures
of most of them and, again, I can remember
those same pictures of those same bulls
on the barn wall where my dad managed
a purebred Simmental outfit.
Mark is trained in Iowa state, bachelor's degree,
master's at Cornell, and than back
Iowa state for a PhD in genetics.
Excellent background with regard
to a whole diversity of careers.
Since then, we always talk about
how we're guided on paths that ultimately put us
in an ideal place, and I believe that's what has occurred
for Mark, so to have him here in Nebraska
with the wealth of knowledge and academia
in industry and federal system,
and as a national program leader for Food Animal
production for a time,
as a director of the Dairy Forge unit in Madison, Wisconsin
and now again, at Mark.
We look forward to a lot of good things continuing
and growing at the US Meat Animal Research Center.
Excited for the opportunities to collaborate
with you and scientists there,
so help me welcome, if you will.
(audience clapping)
Mark: Career paths, I had like five in my lifetime.
What he's trying to say is that I'm probably
the weirdest ARS employee meeter
you're ever gonna talk to, right?
I am a super great scientist at ARS,
and I have never conducted an experiment a day in my life.
Not even one.
Not as a professional after
I spent some time at Cornell.
So my background is in (mumbles).
I grew up on a diversified, small farm
in Paige County, actually.
I don't even know why Paige County is famous
and now we're leaders.
You better get your pens out.
Jay Lash and Chuck Henderson both
are from Paige County, Iowa.
So I got to Cornell and they got to know me a little better
and they looked at me and said what the hell happened
to you, Bogus, you drink the same water I guess.
That's some pretty powerful animal breeding
background in that part of the world and they grew up in
even smaller towns than I did.
My home town is essentially now gone,
it's about 800 people, no school or anything left,
but in fact, when I was in school,
it was about 50 in my class so we had a reasonably
good FFA program and I was a big time before each,
I was the national foray chief award winner,
I had a beef cattle herd, that night I had pigs.
All I was ever gonna do is farm, 1983 when I graduated
from Iowa State, what did the farm economy look like
those of you that remember?
Yeah, that's pretty tough, right, there was no way.
And so I told my advisor and Dr. Max Rothschild
was working with me a little bit at the time.
So where did you go to graduate school?
Sounds good to me, what's your graduate school?
So you pick one and I'll go.
So they picked Cornell and I got accepted at Dale
and that's where I got started.
So I got my masters degree there
in their grading and I went back to Iowa state
and got the PhD and SIP with the chief industry,
Ed Marco and others there.
Which I think are the beef genesis.
And Lauren Christian, some heavy hitters,
right, that was a fun committee.
So I had a masters degree in dairy, right,
and a PhD in sheep, so naturally I went to the university
of Bido as a full time extensions specialist in beef
and swine.
I was a beef specialist, that's all I did,
specialist person there and I was a part of the original
IRM team with Ed Duran that put together that
integrated resource, the little red book the NCBA has.
That was Ed Duran and I was a part of that.
So I learned on western range and conditions,
basically some fire and range management and all that,
so I went in the industry for a little bit.
Really liked that, working the pork industry,
and that's a long story, but it was a great program,
kind of matured, got an opportunity to go to the port
board, so I met Benny and others at port board,
been incredible to work there, I really liked that.
We had a good committee there, we did a lot of good
things, we lowered the input temperature of pork,
we got the genome sequenced, we did lots of really
fun things there, kind of caught the attention
of Steve Kapas and the next thing I know I'm on my way
to Washington D.C. to be a national program leader
for food and production which having never been
in academia or done an experiment, now I'm working
with 100% research, so how does that translate?
Well, they needed what I got, right, they needed
a connection in the industry, they needed somebody
to oversee production, could speak about sheep
and beef and cattle, so it worked, it moved a lot better
than I could imagine.
But I liked that a lot, I really liked living
in Madison, I wanted to get closer to the science
and supervision and those kind of things
so I went to Madison,
as part of the U.S. Dairy Forage Research Center.
Back up in the actual program steps, we had a vacancy
for pastures and forages arrangements and because
I had cows, in Iowa and Colorado and Idaho
and I've been a ranging specialist, a beef specialist
in Idaho, I knew a little bit about ranging,
can you do this for a while?
So I went and did that for a while and the next thing
you know I'm in charge of that program too.
So I actually ended up being in charge of the two
largest programs in ARS and only had one NPL.
So they doubled my salary, right?
They gave me all that extra work to do
and I got paid twice, right?
I got a nice big banking card at the union.
While I did, it was fun, it really was fun,
but I get it, I needed to do a little more
so I went to Madison to work with dairy
'cause they had a great partnership there
with folks I knew already at the university,
they had a really good program and dairy
has data, right?
It was a really good opportunity for me there.
This was my roots.
So when this position became open,
you all know the background, right,
we're getting by it, it's been a challenge,
basically I said nobody in their right mind
would take that position, right, to be the director,
well, big promotion, a little money,
a talk with John and other things and here I am.
So I won't be speaking much about that,
so I'll get going.
Just wanted to underscore the fact pre-here, right,
but I do live and breathe animal systems.
If you ever stop and see me, or go to see
cow hides, I have a pair of long horns above
my fireplace, there are some fossils, I have a weird
house because I'm into animals and all that good stuff.
So can the lights go off or is that possible?
So I didn't know really what to bring today
because I'm brand new, right, so we haven't really
dug in on programs, and we are really fortunate right now
to have extraordinary scientists with really extraordinary
programs, so I'm not gonna dish up that,
I'm in a slick them up period where I promised,
look, listen and learn, right?
I'm trying to be good, I'm trying to let that happen,
to understand what we do at Clay Center
and really indoctrinate myself in the systems there,
on the production side, the crews,
how we manage staff,
what are our opportunities, those kinds of things.
And we're in about four months of that process
but I will make it five,
I can't guarantee six, but I'm gonna make it five.
But we're still not gonna disrupt any of the science,
so I just decided today I'm gonna give you
kind of the overview of what I'm working on,
when we host tours, we host a lot of tours,
about three a week right now.
Some of this you'll know, some of this is just interesting
stuff, then at the end of the hour, I'll get to some
of the ways that I'm thinking about evolving
the location and thinking a little bit now about
the future for populations and extraordinary
depopulation in the future for other humans as well
and we'll see how it goes.
So we were brought online in 1964, June.
We have, there we go, this is kind of the way that
place got transferred from the Navy to us,
about that side and I'll talk a bit more about
that a little later.
The original mission then was to develop scientific
information and new technology to solve high priority
problems for the U.S. beef, sheep and swine industries.
I don't know if that's our mission,
but that was the original intention of the location,
so we were really built on a foundation and partnership
with the University of Nebraska as all NSR
locations were, we owned all the resources with the respect
to buildings and land and that kind of thing
and the university provided the staffing
and a lot of the staffing and then all the animals.
That's all changed now.
Not for better or worse, it's just different.
So most of you know that this was a naval ammunition depot,
a few details about that, that I think are pretty
extraordinary, that came online in 1942.
So on July 14th, 1942, this location was commissioned
at the time, that was, I'm trying to remember,
I think there was 230 farmers were on the locations
and they were gone in two weeks.
Start to finish.
Think about that.
It's located where it is why?
Because it was in equal distance between coast
and to New Orleans and ports in the south,
we had U.S. highways 6 and 281 that came through there,
there was no interstate highways at the time.
The original location was actually much bigger,
48,000 acres, it took up 274 miles of roads
in a period of matter of months, and 207 miles
of additional railroad tracks.
So, also think about this phenomenon,
this was farmland on July 14th, 1942,
and the first munitions shipped on July 1943.
So to say that it was a big deal in a hurry
was kind of an understatement.
It employed 11,500 workers, a large majority of those
were women and a lot of them came to town with children,
all the other men were in the military, older men,
so it was an extraordinary recruitment and training
effort because they all had to have security clearance
and all that kind of stuff.
And ultimately, our location out there produced 40%
of the Navy munitions for WWII, ran 24 hours a day,
in 2200 buildings, which was eight bunkers per day,
they were pouring concrete just in four days, right,
to build all kinds of big shells and small shells,
and torpedo warheads and rockets and heavy depth charges,
all mixed up, you see it all in movies,
it was built there and placed there,
the biggest shells were the 16 inch shells
for battleships.
Amazingly those weight 2700 pounds and they could
throw them for 24 miles, and they could fire every
20 seconds and they could fire all nine at once.
The fact is, there is the picture of USS Iowa firing
all nine at once.
So it's pretty remarkable wasn't it,
that they put that all together in that short period of time
and it only lasted four years, right?
They did keep it online for seven years after
the war, but it took them, up and running in a year,
and it produced ordinances for four years
and it took eight years just to clean it up.
Just to be neutralized, to tear it apart,
and that's just in a nutshell, that's the history
of the location and I find that fascinating.
But what I didn't talk about is the impact on the town,
which was dying from 40% unemployment from the depression,
and when 10,000 new people showed up over night,
plus families, schools and kids attending the class,
60 in a class, and people were renting beds out
in six hour shifts, so you would rent your room,
your spare room and you'd come in for six hours,
he'd come in for six hours and then your turn
and your turn, going back to work.
That's how they lived, there was a huge group
of Native Americans up in there with tents
in Nebraska for four years,
on the side of the road, so it was a remarkable
cultural, sociological phenomenon in addition
to the war effort.
So back to the modern times I guess, we have about 110
employees out there, that changes a little bit
as you know, some of those folks are being,
UNL folks are being converted to Federal employees,
so we're growing a little bit, plus or minus,
about 50 scientists and then the rest of these
are the support staff.
We have about a 100 to 110 UNL employees at any time,
and they're still providing animal care, farming
and maintenance and all kinds of things
they're doing for us.
That partnership is really effective.
We are right at $23 million dollars in appropriated times,
we generated about $7 million or so in ranch
and farm receipts and we have anywhere from 500,000
to about $3 million dollars in grant funds,
so I just kind of picked the middle number there.
The good news potentially is with the new budget this year,
we are hearing that we are in line, not guaranteed
for what's called capital investment strategy funding,
that's a one off bout of funding that ARS used
to modernize the location so that if it happens
for us, we'll have a net total of around $7 million
dollars to spend, so we're hoping, right,
we're hoping that's intact in the budget
and that we can use that.
Then we're gonna focus on new coal sheds,
and modernizing the swine unit,
all kinds of things, focusing on animals first
and then other things.
We're a big farm operation, ranch operation,
there's about 8,000 cows right now,
with about 2,200 ewes who produce
about 950 litters per year,
we don't really count per set house,
but that's about the average and they give about
6,400 head capacity at the feedlot,
we're using that for the moment in time.
We have again 34,000 total acres,
we graze about 24,000 of that, but a lot of those
grazing acres are now coming under some form of irrigation
so we have irrigated pastures, about 2,300 acres
of corn this year, we're gonna break our yield records
by 2020.
More than 20 bushes per acre this year,
we had the best year ever, we were dry early
and that just stiffened that corn up and made it tough
when it started raining and we're in the 250,
270 bushel range for most of this whole country out there.
So it means also that a lot of alfalfa and alfalfa grass
mix and hay production.
I'm going really fast because I know you've probably
seen or been exposed to some of this, we can come back
if you have questions, so just a few pictures,
this is the terrain, beneath are some of the new
facilities that we've added to modernize
a piece of it and we're gonna continue to do that.
So these are electronic self-feeding stations
and we're trying to get to them,
these are filing stations that are used to collect
feed and forensic data.
There's a few pictures of the sheep flock,
this is the famous Easy Care, a composite that we're
building for the industry, to look at production
and efficiency with minimal input so that's a pretty
nice picture representation of that.
This is the Amonia BP Group and this is couple
of pictures.
This dog comes up and visits me in the front yard
of the location very often.
A few pictures from the GPE herd which is the general
plasm herd that we used to sample the industry
on the annual basis.
Pictures of feed lot.
And then, maybe something you don't know as much
about, but there could also be some contamination
on the ground,
there's one particular chemical that when it's
exposed to sunlight, it gets neutralized,
so we have a project where army core has come in
and this facility right there and right there,
they pump 24 hours a day now out of this canal
and goes down through the established series
of really extraordinary wetlands,
all through the project,
so there are a lot of wildlife,
fish wildlife, algae, and we did a lot of interaction
with water quality and that kind of stuff,
that needs to be improved and expanded
and into all kinds of opportunity.
We're getting full right now with all this stuff
already, we're right to the top of every dike,
and there's craw marks and ducks and pheasants,
all kinds of things out there, hares, yeah,
pelicans, lots of wild life.
That is good and bad, right?
We're not coming in free of all packages,
so it's an opportunity because we know exactly
what the water is, and the rebus,
it infiltrates back into the ground
and we have a real opportunity.
(mumbles)
It has a relatively large amount of water.
So I think you'll be hearing more about that
in the future, of course we have lots of wild life.
We had a nesting eagle on the location,
there's only three tress
in the whole place, so that's a surprise,
other than a few pine trees.
And in the end, the history of the location,
one of these bunkers blew up and that's a big
story from the war effort, but this is from the original
land owners out there, they still take good care of that,
(mumbles) we knocked some of it and we're gonna leave
it on purpose to keep the cash up there.
But that's all top soil, those things,
who inherited that, despite top soil,
was also getting the summer swells,
so everywhere they padded it, it's all top soil.
So we will go back and get some of that.
Use it to remediate the location.
So a little bit now about the evolving mission,
we were founded to study large herds
and flocks and this has come around from the original
documentation,
develop integrated scientific information,
animal production in industry-like conditions.
How many of you would agree that that's even more
important now than ever?
Right, looking at big systems around the world
and we're looking to understanding all things
genomic, phenomenon, we need access to large populations
that we can control and manage accordingly.
We're also founded on the idea that livestock
production needs to be studied
as an integrated system, really I think coming back
to that and simultaneously by many different
scientists so multi-disciplinary and connecting
the dots, I know that as well.
Our original mission is still valid
and I think that it's even in the place
where we can go back now and kind of look at what
that committee set for us early on and how we
need to evolve that thinking more contemporary,
but I don't think it's gonna change too much,
I think we're still gonna drill down and make it better.
So we have now four units there, research units
that has changed over time and we probably will
go back to five at some point, but right now
we have a genetics unit now, and that's sort
of an odd way to look at the world, but it works
really well for us, it represents two national
programs at the ARS, loot of work with meat safety
and meat quality as you know,
those are real powerhouse groups there.
Tommy Weeder and Chuck Lafer and the boys,
everybody there.
Three different national programs there,
nutrition and environmental management,
Chris and Hale is another, really doing some
amazing work, a little bit of 212
which is Soil and Air, national program Soil and Air,
with (mumbles), he's worked with management.
And reproduction, it's been a wheelhouse
place for us, we spent a lot of time in energy,
and that's still the case, we do a lot of really
good work there, and in fact, we're running
some things about beef that are gonna change,
we're gonna look at better selection and managing cows
and cow longevity and we've really seen the impact.
So we've got lots of opportunity.
So I'd say now we're even more focused on large populations
for integrated research and we're gonna study these
in systems based, we are looking to do a better job
of collecting that data, phenotyping, making sure
our extraordinary research populations are still
where we want them to be.
So historically, the nutrition, the reproduction,
engineering, animal health, genetics quality,
there's been a lot of collaboration there,
but we haven't really picked up on that full systems
perspective and I think that's where we're going,
so the new focus that I'm trying to bring is looking
at all of this.
A much more integrated network-based perspective,
so we're really wanting to start to look at not
statistical analysis, but a relationship
framework within the genetics environment,
management, socio-economic factors and all that GEMS,
we just call that GEMS, G-E-M-S.
So what's a little different than what maybe we've
been doing is we're gonna add places where we're gonna
drill down precision agriculture engineering,
antibiotic resistance, we're doing a lot of amazing
work there and we're looking at all things microbiome,
the common thing is that you know if you open the door
to discussion about the microbiome,
there's 10 more doors in there, right?
We don't know where all the pieces are yet,
and let alone how they work together, how we manage them
and manipulate all that, so that's a great area,
more all the time on water waste and environment
management and then again with the new water shed,
right, we have an opportunity to look at a lot of
interactions between (mumbles) and resident wildlife,
and yeah, a lot of opportunity.
So maybe just a little different spin on how we're
gonna tie all this together which I think is swell.
So just a quick little bit of background
on one area, so that's all ARS providing you with
a couple of slides that show the history
of the impact of the programs in general,
where we're at now and where we're going,
and I got them for comedy, so I threw them in here,
I don't have them for anybody else.
I'm gonna show those to you today.
So this is the history of what we did in a place
for meat safety and quality, right, new technologies,
understanding and doing a better job with pathogen
detection, this is world-famous now right.
If you bring about beef grading,
this is online everywhere, antimicrobial
interventions, all these things, so now where are we at?
We're looking at that AMR, as part of the separate,
we think we found the marker for dark cutters,
have you heard that?
Staff report thinks he's got them pinpointed,
we're looking for it now so maybe we're gonna
have a test for dark cutters in beef.
This is the new technology that they're beta-testing
online, they got a big tech transfer award
from ARS and it's a real time scan of samples
of that trim, going to this bin for the pathogen
that they're looking for, 457 or whatever,
so instead of just palpating in there
with manually collecting that sample,
this is actually sampling every single piece
sliced across it so they got it working
in a couple of plants and they're trying
to perfect the mechanical pieces of the process,
otherwise that's been perfect and they're working
also on similar kind of grading opportunities
for pork.
So in future, autonomy is,
you know what does it give us, an opportunity
to understand and what does the living
ecology USMARC look like,
we'll have time to talk more about that,
applying all kinds of omics to all things meat
and meat quality and safety and understanding
this relationship between and in his mind,
in particular food safety and microbiome, right?
So all kinds of opportunity and new thinking there,
lots of publicity from those guys.
We'll elaborate on what they think the opportunities are.
So, GP projects, maybe one of the most famous
beef, cattle selection projects in the world,
I don't think that is an overstatement,
it's 60 years old now, sample of all these different
combination cattle and producing remarkable results,
we're still fully engaged here and in fact
we still have almost 4,000 cows on this project
alone, we're gonna use them for lots of good things,
to feed the lot or whatever.
It's an odd looking group of cattle if you drive by,
there's tiger stripes, there's brown looking cattle
out there and there's the best red and cream colored
cattle you've ever seen as well.
So it's a fun group of cattle to drive by every morning.
These are the bulls we sired since 2006
and this is sort of representative of population
of what's available to producers in the industry,
so (mumbles) and a whole lot of eggs.
We're gonna look at this, how we envision this population
in a five or two year period here coming up
over the next year and I suspect we may eliminate
a few breeds but we may not too, we may add some
who knows, but we're definitely gonna take a good look
at this and Matt and others here will be involved
in those discussions I'm sure, so that will be a fun
exercise, so again, those cattle,
we're used to looking at a lot of things,
and most things are pretty traditional.
We got a group over here that aren't
and we look to see how those new traits
might be added and what kind of data mining
and leveraging goes with all that and we're going
to try to evaluate as many biologically
or economically important traits as possible
and that's the goal of this project, to achieve that
and to continue to develop that extraordinary
resource from the past year.
So interesting right here, the genetic trends
associated with that group of cattle,
they reflect the industry returns pretty well, right?
So where's the light one, we sorted them out yet,
right here in 1972,
look at that now.
We just got to look at the location,
I for one think that's a good thing,
but it does show you what selection pressure
can do to yearly weights, right?
Pretty clear,
they're all up, they're all pretty positive
but the big cattle are Simmental
and Charolais I guess.
So just a few examples of some new research,
anti-microbial resistance and we're studying
reproduction and impact on AMR on the end
product and the environment both
so we're tracking and monitoring the development,
propagation and the ultimate impact
or manifestation of that resistance in both the animal
and the effects on human health
but also on the environment.
We learned a lot of things that are very
interesting with the respect to the argument
that you hear in the news all the time
that we are guilty parties, that the animal systems
our production is creating, that's been said
so many times in a while now that it's a fact, right,
that we are a problem?
They still don't have a single conclusive piece
of evidence that supports that,
and what we're learning now, don't quote me on this
exactly, but what we're learning now is that we might
have less AMR where we're feeding antibiotics
than we do where we're not feeding antibiotics,
or at least not anymore, right?
So their journey is still out and some of it
results (mumbles).
So again this is the big deal with USDA
(mumbles) partnerships and others.
Of course we donate a lot of time and resources
to DNA referencing and we are upgrading the bio
right now, we're upgrading again next summer,
and purchasing new nano core technology that
we are also starting to use, so we're trying
to remain at the forefront of all things
genomic reference genomes assemblies
and all that.
We've done the work to support the pig effort,
this is Domanaete, right there, that's here,
she works in original sequence cap,
she's from Kioshi, and this is the example,
that's not for sheep, just a cool sheep
picture, but we also work with sheep genome as well
and many of you already know this cow,
right?
How many of you know Esperanza?
Right, she was here, right, she's pretty cool,
she represents the new technology that's just being
published now where we have it perfect,
literally a perfect reference sequence
with respect to whatever perfect means
with respect to other genomes, but she is,
she represents the highest quality genome
on the planet.
With the exception of the X chromosomes,
so an amazing advancement in technology,
I still think, I really don't think of how
big a step this is, it's gonna take us light years
further down the road, at how we look at animal
breeding and others things, personalized medicine.
So that's trio binning, if you don't know what that is,
just Google that paper, it's been pre-published,
you can go at it, it's really interesting, it involves
the sequence on the parents as well as on the individual.
Provide opportunity to really look at vastly
improved assemblies.
Also it will enable better annotation
of sequences and allows us to look at real effects
and eventually when it's updated to dig into things
like heterosis and things with much more sophistication.
We empower a lot of technology in ARS,
it's probably also in genome sequencing
and the area originally that's been adopted all over
the place, including 23 and me, as far as I can
23 and me and Ancestry.com are 700,000 paid chips
that are built in ARS.
As far as I can tell and they won't tell you that,
but I think that's what they are,
so that's pretty cool.
And again a lot of genomic evaluations,
particularly for livestock and dairy.
Lots of partners from all U.S. as well,
but now we're shifting focus a bit and looking
at functional meals and looking at novel data sets
mainly and looking at microbial systems
and viral pathogens and how they influence
the microbiome in lots of things,
so we're developing more insights
and more research avenues in those directions.
Extensive research in Food Safety,
E.coli 157 and also other things, we're continuing
to do a lot of that and now we're looking at a lot more
old genome sequencing in that area,
pre and post harvest interventions.
Pathogen movements and all kinds of things
that are associated with food safety,
and we get a lot of amazing collaborations
from the industry and that's where the real
successive thinking, how well we get support
from the industry and how well they have done
with respect to transferring those things and technologies
in the field, it's been an amazing success.
With Mary and others, we've created a model farm
within market and we dedicated a large area,
seven to nine pivots is what we need to make these
systems work and we allocated infrastructure
and we're committed to this,
got a three-year project going.
I hit the wrong button there.
Three years, we're focused on growing cows through
finishing, including carcass data and two years
of working with efforts.
(mumbles)
Living Lab, concept is one that John pioneered
and we want to pick up on and try to tip
that to a systems ecology verbiage.
If any of you looked up Living Lab on Wikipedia,
do you know what living lab is?
It has nothing to do with biology or agriculture,
Living Lab is where you bring folks in like you,
you lock the door and you work together
to come up with some technology,
it wouldn't matter,
and it's kind of a crowd-source perspective of developing
technology.
So we got on the call with Europeans and Canadians
and other folks around the world to talk about
living lab and ARS, and I'm thinking cows and biology
and capturing the systems perspective
and they're thinking market (mumbles) and developing
technologies so they want to know about socio
economic analysis and they want to know about stakeholder
involvement, so we get off this call with Jeff Elle,
you know Jeff, Jeff what the heck are they talking
about?
I don't know, what were they talking about?
So we Googled living lab and we had a decidedly
different definition, so I don't want to disagree
that's the right term, just not being interpreted
that way outside of what you're looking at,
so we're trying to make it more system developed.
But what we really want to look at is the production
systems, start to connect the dots with those
GEMS relationships, and promoting the use of MARC
as a laboratory for that kind of work,
we'll be bringing in a lot of extraordinary
collaborations over time,
and we're leveraging our current relationships with others.
Environmental impact of beef production including
AMR, (mumbles) a lot to do with that, right?
I'm gonna be talking a bit about this I hope today,
if we have time, but what we're really trying now
is expanding this into a research consortium
that would be focused on comprehensively capturing
the value of those beef systems and closing the loop,
soil health, forage systems, cow, calf,
feedlot, manure,
meat quality and safety in the continuum.
We'll dig in here a little bit on that.
So the quick summary of all that
and again this is the topic I'm generally putting together
to give to visitors, not really tailored
to you very well, but the idea is to brag here
a little bit, right, extraordinary history,
mission, partners, resources, expertise,
and research and embracing the opportunity.
So now just back to some initial steps,
so that's kind of an overview of the location
from a historical perspective,
so what am I doing?
I've been here like I said about four months,
so we had a big stakeholder meeting
early on just trying to reconnect that group
and get on forward with some things
and Glen participated in that.
I asked, I know a lot of the folks,
but I didn't know them all so I thought
we're gonna set the stage, we're gonna give
everybody a change, give me a five minutes
of why you're there, why are you at Clay Center
today and what energy do you bring to this,
what's encouraging, why are you here with respect
to all things, and I guess who was the first one up?
(mumbles)
He got to talking and he got back to literally
preschool, he started in preschool, and here's
who my mentors were and here's why it's important
to me and here's all people who are outstanding
and I'm looking at my wrist watch, he goes five
minutes, seven minutes, 10, 12 minutes,
14 minutes and he was the shortest one.
If you know Dave Nichols, right, Dave was pushing
on 20 minutes, Bill Rachel wasn't far behind,
anyway, by the time I got to my agenda timeline
and I wanted to be done with that, we hadn't come around
the corner of the room, we were still on the back end,
but it was remarkable, wasn't it?
It was amazing, everybody just took a deep breath
and exhaled and it felt really good because
it kind of cleared the air on it, on all the trials
and tribulations around USMARC, and it set the stage
for a lot of really frank communication and discussion,
it ended up being very good.
So we will have, swine and beef, swine and sheep
coming up relatively soon, we have a new scientist
coming in, Tom Murphy is gonna be taking over
our sheep program and he comes in on November 19th,
as soon as he's on board, had a couple of weeks
to figure out which office is his,
we'll try to bring you together
and some of you to get involved in that.
Again we're looking at strengthening partnerships
so the one reason I'm here, and I want to talk
about some idea we have about collaboration,
we have the vet claims, veterinary out there,
SCAL culture lab and I want to partner with them
very strongly and I want to get them with us,
to be better partners than we've been in the past,
but I want agreements, I want to understand
what their perspectives are and where those
are coming from, for both structures
reaching beneficial relationship.
So we're working on that with the vice provost Bane
and Archie Clever, he's a good friend of mine.
So, also looking at a lot of production system
improvements, for example, with respect
to forage management, I learned when I was in medicine
that I can build a pig barn with no blessing needed
from any DND anywhere in the ARS or the USDA.
So guess what I'm building, two barns, lots of them,
with the hay inside.
So right now we're wrapping big bales and we're storing
them outside and then we're gonna go to square
bales and put them inside so that's a 30%
improvement in forage management right there,
so that's one place we're going.
We're looking really intensely at beef and sheep
production and relative salaries and all kinds
of challenges there, education, information,
I'm putting together a manual on animal care
and well-being, so there will be industry experts
and some of you and folks from Kansas state
or Colorado state or Iowa state in the industry,
going to the location a couple of times a year
for workshops exchange of ideas,
what's working, what's not, where can we improve,
what can we share and email.
Their systems improved, what research might be
prescribed by that effort, all kinds of development,
that's the proactive look at healthcare and well-being.
Keeping people engaged, but also showing that we have
taken the full breath of arms so to speak
and we're gonna move forward working on this.
We had a lot of trouble with qualified cowboys
and folks that work on the farm
so we're gonna be putting together
a team of consultants industry folks to help us
to get on the right page with hassle fees
and protocols for calf, beef or whatever it might be,
we're gonna take this also from a very proactive
highly perspective.
Not gonna be yelling at them to get better
or do better, train yourself, but how can we come
and focus on what we do well and improve that,
to then address shortcomings in the meantime
and we have too many of those.
So we're gonna work hard on that and the strategy
to empower people, make the whole location
more efficient, more productive and obviously
keep putting a lot of pressure on animal care
and well-being.
So last thing I want to talk about is an idea
that we have, I have a whitepaper
for you if you're interested,
from an UNL/ARS Research Consortium,
so the idea here is that we're not worthy
of pointing out a paper, to develop research
strategies, to improve the productivity,
efficiency of environmental sustainability,
safety and quality of beef products and diversified
beef production systems,
but for the maximized value of Federal state
research practices in this consortium,
leveraging expertise and resources and through
an improved communication, coordination
and data management and then provide
a stable, inclusive framework to empower both
foundational research on that tech bench,
and translational research programs.
So this is a framework to empower a lot of these systems,
right, so anything that you're doing with respect
to foundational or basic research should be protected
by this framework, but it should also give you a place
to land in the continuum that starts in the soils
and goes into calf, in the forages and then into calf,
manure management, feed lot, end product,
manure management, back to soils, range and all those
resources.
So what we're after then is a stable framework
that people can get their mind arounds, that they can see
where they fit, they can see how it works
and how it empowers collaborations
and empowers data transfer and connectivity
and it supports a really great work
that a lot of you are doing and it will impact all,
just giving you a larger vehicle
and a better place to work.
So the focus will be on improving research
coordination, enhancing stakeholder engagement,
combining outreach and extension which we don't do
very well at all at Clay Center and real time
identification like a beef SWAT team,
right where we can be nimble and active
in the industry on a very short notice.
And then focus on real industry innovation
and problem solving on the ground.
So then again, also identify what we're missing
from this effort, where we get the prioritized
resources to get out.
Log our research efforts and other resources.
We feature a series of working groups,
again this is a part of the discussion,
forage and rangeland systems, beef animal production
and efficiency.
Health and well-being, product quality and safety,
precision agriculture and integrated system optimization,
that's what we're working towards,
just being modular, right, just a lot of coordination there.
Objectives have been specifically developed or approved
in environmental sustainability,
production systems, improve the overall production
capacity, efficiency and economic end environmental
sustainability of beef systems.
Improve safety and quality of beef products
through optimization of these systems
and through improved animal health and well-being.
Develop or improve integrated beef management systems
that integrate these factors and then provide
the corresponding outreach associated with it.
So, a couple of graphics that I adapted.
How much time do I have?
So I can slow down.
This is a quick look, we call this consortium
in the middle and this is very, very preliminary,
I wouldn't even share this with you,
but here's what I'm trying to look at,
here's the national programs that we've interacted
with in ARS, and here are some of the industry partners,
here are some of the nutrition labs,
beef systems in USDA, grant challenge group
that's working now already and then all kinds
of LTA partners, international partners and management
stuff, so from USDA perspective, this would include
of course and we're listing the ULN as a primary
partner so you folks and then whoever else, right?
They'd be included as well, so we put sustainable
beef systems in the middle, we kind of start again
down here at the bottom, the soil and ecology as well,
but you want to look at the interactive relationships
between soils and rangelands and forage systems,
right, we have extranalities and we have links,
or inefficiencies that we will have to deal with
and the whole idea is that we have better soils,
better arrangements,
better forages, and we learn year on year
from those relationships.
We take what we understand here,
we trade information and we do the same thing
between the cow herds on the landscape,
what can we learn about forage production to optimize
beef production and vice-versa,
our light links, our extranalities,
the ideas for better forages, better cows,
better production, same thing between the animals,
animals systems, beef systems and end product,
same kind of special points and how does that cow herd
impact the reignsmen on the farm or ranch
and what's the best way to look at this resource
and how we provide ecosystem services with respect
to harvest and soil health, ecology
and water quality, all of that and we just keep going,
right?
So all of you that, if you do any kind of beef
research at all, raise your hand, anybody,
can you find yourself in there, are you in there?
Yes, can you not find yourself in there?
I think you're in there, that's my goal,
I want you to be in there,
but I want to be able to represent this as a framework
for entirement and resource utilization,
partnerships, collaborations, big, healthy teams,
and I wanted you to buy insurance from them.
Maybe some of the leadership is not as well
informed, but what we do is they should be,
right, and they have other ideas about how
we should look at location resource
and that kind of thing.
So it's a politically advantageous thing to do
for us as a location for your as an academic unit
and others, Brian Raynolds may interest you
in working with those folks as well,
in other locations throughout ARS.
So with respect to that Living Lab,
really off track discussion we had,
with Europeans and others,
we put this together for the dairy industry,
dairy bench challenge project as well,
but adapting it to beef, but looking at systems
biology, in other words, problem with DNA.
How does DNA move through that same system?
And I think it's interesting to think about that way
because you got soil, microbiome, you know,
all things that are associated with soils,
soil health, how does that translate into
whether the DNA is associated with that, good and bad
and how does that translate into integrated
forage systems and how we look at soil management
and forage production and species composition
and all kinds of things.
How does that influence and vice versa,
there's some anecdotal evidence that cow spit
influences some micro forage plants or something,
so all kinds of maybe off the edge of the map
kind of thinking there, but how does the DNA
here and here influence what might end up
in the system based off inflation and around
the corner and of course into human health
and food safety and all of that.
So trying to get our minds around this Living Lab
as far as what living ecology should look like
and how it should be described.
So if we go back to maybe this concept here,
`one idea I have, if we get the forage pieces
in order and we do a better job with hay
and we're bringing in a whole bank of consultants
to help us there, with that soil/forage systems
interface and not from the research perspective,
but with respect to managing the resource, right,
get that better, I think we can easily support
10,000 cows, without questions, we could support
10,000 cows.
We keep the GP population, we keep the Mark 1s,
and the Mark 2s.
Mark 3s were not using those message we used to,
that's the really good cows on the place,
maybe one idea is we're gonna dedicate 3,000 cows
to this, right, then sort them on metabolic size,
all that, some kind of experiment with it,
we try to look at how those cows
were optimized for that continuum, right?
What does this set of cows look like
at our location in Clay Center,
how are they optimized for that resource,
gonna perfect that whole system,
gonna perfect this cow herd,
we're gonna protect this management system,
we're gonna get everybody to come in and be a part
of that with the respect to the research that we're
doing and maybe we take some cows
and we replicate that herd genetically
at Keel, you know where that's at, at Montana,
it would be much colder, right?
It's pure range on conditions, irrigated pastures,
and the same cow herd, we replicate it
at Almeno, Oklahoma and so we do that real G by E,
right, you can get the same genetics, dramatically
different environment, but we're still focused
on optimizing that set of cows at that location
or not if they don't work, right.
But I'm really interested in metabolic size,
so with your permission I'll use a dairy example,
how many of you know Holesten cows, all right,
everybody knows, you know what Jersey cows are,
so Holesten cows at Madison weigh 1700 pounds,
plus produce, that's average weight, did that surprise you?
What's the correlation between lactation yield
and sheer size in Holesten?
Audience Member: Sheer size and lactation.
Mark: Little, zero, what, what do you think?
Audience Member: I think it's probably near zero.
Mark: So cows have gotten bigger, though,
and lactation has gone up a lot, yield has gone
up a lot, 9,000 pounds in 1950, they got that over here,
year 1950, 9,000 pounds, 30,000 pounds in 2018,
1,200 pounds in 1950, 1,700 pounds now,
that looks like a pretty good,
you're exactly right, it's zero,
there's no reason for those cows to be like that.
Right, so I just told you what the average is now,
right, 30,000 pounds per lactation yield at Holesten,
what's the world record?
Effective population size of Holesten is 3937 cows,
so they're very similar genetically,
is that right, many, do you know?
I think it's about this.
Yeah, not very big, so average is 30,000 pounds,
what's the world record, anybody know?
78,000 pounds.
Living in Wisconsin, eating the same things
in the same building, same genetics,
same size and everything,
she's 16 standard deviations from her herd.
And that trendline is going up because we have
genomics, selection and we really truncated
the population interval, generation interval,
right, because there are selective peppers
based on genomic proofs, so we've gone from
two percentage yield, lactation yield
to four percent annually, but that world record
is still up two, just at the same weight, 72, 74, 76, 78.
So what's the microbiome of that cow plot,
don't you want to know that?
What happened that made her perform like that?
We do it with cows too, so we have all that right,
so another thing we're gonna do here is look
for those kinds of features,
the free database, right, ones that are really out there,
and you, how many of you know for a fact you've seen those?
Every time I drive by a field of corn,
I see one that's three foot taller
and what might I think, that one is different,
right, but if you work with animals right on,
you've seen that bull that gained six pounds
a day, or that feeder when the first cut went out
at 260, and now he's 320, right,
in the confinement operations, they have those
big, heavy pigs that get ahead of everyone.
So this is not the dairy phenomenon, this happens
everywhere, and what do we do with that data now?
Get your data set in, and go that one was freaky,
and something happened, you throw that data away,
I want to go and figure out what's going on with it,
so that's another aspect of this system
that you can leverage now that we have the tools
and the insights.
So, there, so I have the whitepaper,
again, I want nobody to be offended,
this is hot off the press,
the whole systems thing is being put together
by John Hollock, it's not UNL approved,
he didn't go there, he works for you now
and myself to try to capture the value
of all of these systems, what you're already doing
and incorporate some ideas I have across location
work in ARS.
I want to do my piece now that we have you onboard
and I'm sure we're gonna have you onboard,
but I'm just telling you I'm dedicated
to looking at this from USDA side,
but if you want a copy of the whitepaper,
don't assume it's carved in stone,
if you got, you're gonna take out a few minutes
to read it and send me your thoughts,
or you want me to send it to you electronically,
just let me know, it's all fair game.
John and I, the first version that John and I put together
was over Labor Day weekend and we iterated on a couple
of times and presented it to your colleagues,
Ian Thunder and Mike Bane,
lap her back, assuming good shape there.
So it's not really for public dissemination,
but I'd sure like you to have a look at it
and be perfectly willing to provide me feedback
if you think it's appropriate, okay?
Some of you, I'm trying to count on for doing that.
With that, any questions, and sorry for all the blabber
and disconnected approach to this whole thing,
but I tried to provide as much as I could
in a short amount of time.
Any questions?
Dale?
Audience Member: Just a comment, you had about
100 employees by USPN and 100 for UNL,
but UNL aren't actually paid with Federal money, right?
Mark: Yeah, they're paid on the UNL
salary scale, but it all comes out of our receipts,
so it's our money, you know, as far as the location
is concerned, but they're paid according to UNL.
And what actually could change that, is that we cannot
pay Federal employees out of it, with all the account
money, so for us to have say less, fewer UNL employees
and more Federal employees, we'd have to have the money
because we couldn't use the same commerce,
but over time, we have evolved some positions
to the Federal side.
But I don't know what that feature looks like,
we're talking about it.
That's how it works, there's no state money that goes
to the location, other than HR support.
Is that what you're asking?
Other questions?
Professor: We need to step out for different
class, so anyone else wishing to?
Audience Member: Do we have time?
Professor: We can take a couple of minutes I think,
I guess worthwhile.
Audience Member: I'm just curious, how much of the,
when you look at the directions,
the research, how much of that comes internally
through grass root effort and how much comes from D.C.?
Mark: So right now I'm not changing any
research direction at all, I want to make that real clear,
we're envisioning what these populations
and resources look like and we're gonna do
a really in depth job of that,
but I'm not saying to Tommy Wheeler, you need
to change what you're doing, right, at any level,
so no threat, no influence at all,
so that comes from natural programs,
originally with the ARS, right?
But they're out all the time talking
to the same stakeholders we are,
they are betting all of that and Jeff's a great guy,
do you all know Jeff I'm talking about,
he's a big guy, right?
So sheep and cattle, logically he's gonna
defer a lot of things he's hearing from us
and from others, he's gonna use a composite
source of all information available and that being said,
I'm pretty opinionated, I kind of think
I know where we need to go a lot of places
and that's where I'm sure right now,
in a pretty good spot, right,
we have great scientists being able to do great things.
Not saying that they don't need to evolve,
but I'm gonna have a lot to say about that I hope
and I hope that it's a balance between what I hear
from you folks, from stakeholders,
and you know, all kinds of other input,
but yeah, that comes, matrix arrangement, right?
You have a group that administers the finances
and you have a group that administers programs,
that's where Steve Kapas is, he's leading that whole
program effort now, if you know Steve.
Perhaps one more question.
Must've answered them all.
Audience Member: Just one curiosity, this idea
of connecting the different centers together
is one that I'm really excited about.
Hard to imagine getting that done,
it's the best of GEMS, I think comes into play
in trying to coordinate these different U.S.,
the different ARS centers?
Mark: Yeah, you have an idea.
So the bad answer is that if it was easy,
everybody would be doing it,
so that's the trick, so the data
is the most important aspect, so we have
to be ahead of the bio-informatics,
it's not just sequence data
and production data,
it's how does that soil help data
translate into forage systems
and how does that translate into inferences
for big production.
So those are the great questions, right?
But just understanding that if we don't produce
a beef system that takes care of soil,
we're not sustainable, I don't care what
the rest looks like.
We're in the grading soils or we're eroding carbon.
We're not sustainable, so starting in right there,
so now, what does that mean and how does that connect?
I think then we'll have conversations
around that that will be very informative.
I don't have by any shape or imagination,
I don't have all those answers in place,
I'm just trying to look for a way to get at those
because I'm gonna rely on you guys to help me
answer those questions,
you in particular in some order and others,
right?
I'm more concerned about getting
the framework in place,
carving it in stone,
so that the rest of it can be where it needs to be,
to iterate over time, irritate too probably,
but iterate over time and what I want to say is
look what we learned about forage systems,
meaning that we're in the middle of a trial,
but we need to apply that absolute,
that's what I want, these dynamic, nimble,
evolving experiments that learn from year to year
and don't just carve out a five year period
that are static and you've drawn the boundaries
around it, you know.
Install them, right, that these are iterative,
and they get better and they improve over time
and you can see the end product in some kind of measure
and sustainability of profit,
or production or efficiency or whatever it is.
50 years from now, what are you gonna get paid for,
if you're a beef producer?
Calf weight or your ability to make maximum
efficient use of your resources,
which one is gonna take?
Second one, you're gonna get paid for how efficiently
you use your resource and how well you match that
resource to your production system,
your production environment, you're not gonna
get paid per pound, you may get a check for pounds,
but your profitability is gonna be determined
by how efficient you are with the resources
that are afforded to you.
And that pressure is mounting, that's the whole reason
you're in, as all over system research and system
perspectives, because you can't just go full tilt
and folks on efficiency and resource utilization,
balance those, right?
So that's another reason that this needs to balance
and ebb and flow and learn from itself,
it can be a dynamic framework for all.
Professor: Thank you for joining us today, Mark.