University of Kentucky students will have new opportunities to study animal agriculture following the Wednesday ribbon-cutting of the new Meats and Foods Industry Advancement Center.
In addition to the new research facility, originally budgeted at $90 million, the site at the C. Oran Little Research Farm will also feature a community farm store, Wildcat Market, offering meat produced by UK students studying animal agriculture, butchering and processing.
UK Vice President for Land-Grant Engagement Laura Stephenson said the facility is “an important step forward” for agriculture in the commonwealth.
“As Kentucky's land grant university, our responsibility is to put knowledge to work, so this means in listening to the people and the industries we serve, understanding the challenges they face, and bringing together the expertise and resources needed to develop practical solutions,” Stephenson said as university officials celebrated alongside state legislators Wednesday in Versailles.
Kentucky is home to more than 69,000 farms, according to a 2022 federal census. That's down nearly 20,000 from two decades prior. The agricultural products sold in 2022 were valued at more than $8 billion.
In recent years, farmers have been subject to rising costs on everything from land to seed.
UK’s new facility should support local animal processors, Stephenson said. It includes a classroom where students can watch carcass fabrication and facilities for product development and research.
“The center will also expand our service to Central Kentucky by housing members of our Central Region Extension team,” Stephenson said. “Our college has long benefited from research and extension centers serving the eastern and western regions of the state. This facility gives our faculty, specialists, and extension professionals another important place to work directly with producers, processors and industry partners.”
UK President Eli Capilouto said Kentuckians should support projects like the new center and the state’s agriculture workforce.
“For more than a century, the University of Kentucky has educated students in meat science and worked alongside the people who sustain our agricultural economy,” Capilouto said. “The tools have changed, the science has advanced, the needs of producers and processors have grown more complex. Our responsibility, however, remains the same: to ensure that the knowledge, the knowledge created at this university, reaches the people who can use it to strengthen Kentucky.”
The ribbon-cutting ceremony comes just ahead of Kentucky Ag Education Week for elementary students. The program, created in partnership with the state’s departments of education and agriculture, brings hands-on to students who don’t live on farms.
“I think (the facility is) a representation of the evolution of Kentucky agriculture, and our willingness to support and help it grow in every different way that we need to make sure that we can support our farmers and make sure that our rural communities stay strong,” Lt. Gov. Jacqueline Coleman, who attended Wednesday’s event, told WEKU.
Caleb Ragland, president of the Kentucky Livestock Coalition, said recently, livestock has been a bright spot on the tight margins of the industry.
“The more that we can work to innovate and to find ways to do things more efficiently, to do it better, to find ways to connect farmers and consumers on a more direct relationship, while doing it in scale and efficiently, that's where this work that we're doing and this investment that has been made — that's where it all comes together,” Ragland said.
A Larue County farmer, Ragland said as a father to sons who want to go into agriculture one day, investments like UK’s news facility are exciting.
“We can't continue to just farm and do things the same way that we have in the past and expect it to work into the future,” Ragland told WEKU. “... We have to find ways to connect better with our consumers and to deliver something that truly brings value to the consumer, and centers such as this are helping to teach and to help develop what will be the future in animal agriculture, and that's really exciting to see.”
The facility’s director, Gregg Rentfrow, told WEKU the site improves on previous resources.
“We were able to do things in the old lab, but now we're able to do things on a bigger scale,” Rentfrow said. “To where in the past we could only handle a few animals at a time, now we can do bigger kills for our researchers, and also expand on our research.”
