By investing in these core areas, the Ag Experiment Station fulfills its land-grant mandate: to conduct research that has direct impact on improving agriculture, the environment and the quality of life in Iowa and beyond. It also ensures that findings are shared broadly so the public can benefit. 

Integration with CALS and Beyond

Administratively, the Experiment Station is embedded within CALS, and virtually all CALS faculty with research appointments are researchers in the Experiment Station. This means a portion of their work (especially that funded by Hatch Act dollars) aligns with the station’s focus areas. The AES provides infrastructure funding, seed grants and support staff that bolster the college’s overall research capacity. It also encourages interdisciplinary and intercollegiate projects. For example, collaborating with the College of Engineering on precision ag, or with the College of Veterinary Medicine on animal health. 

The Experiment Station’s work often involves multi-state collaborations as well: Iowa State is part of the North Central Regional network of experiment stations and contributes to multi-state research committees that tackle issues transcending state lines (such as water quality in the Mississippi River Basin). In this way, Iowa State’s Experiment Station is a node in a national network, sharing knowledge with other land-grant universities. 

Impact and Recent Achievements

The contributions of the Experiment Station are both long-term and immediate. Historically, research under this program helped eradicate livestock diseases, developed new apple varieties suited for the region, dramatically increased corn and soybean yields and helped introduce practices like contour farming to reduce erosion. 

In recent years, Experiment Station-funded projects have:

• Led to the development of new soybean varieties with high yield and improved pest resistance
• Advanced modeling tools to optimize contributions of management and plant traits to maximize productivity
• Developed new conservation practices to reduce nitrate and phosphorus pollution in water
• Pioneered technologies for smart agriculture

The station also quickly responds to emerging issues – for example, studying the spread of African Swine Fever (a global livestock threat) or assessing the derecho storm damage to Iowa’s crops in 2020 and leading strategies for recovery. Find impact reports reported annually to the Council on Research, Extension and Teaching. 

Iowa State’s Experiment Station scientists have attracted over $60 million per year in outside grants recently, amplifying the impact of the base federal/state funding. Another metric is technology transfer: many patents and licenses originate from Experiment Station research (overlapping with CALS innovation metrics ). But perhaps most telling is the adoption of practices by Iowans – for instance, the spread of precision conservation techniques like prairie strips (an Iowa State-developed concept) implemented on a growing number of farms, or improvements in land management partly attributable to research-driven extension programs. 

The Agricultural Experiment Station is the cornerstone of CALS research and combines stable public funding with creative science to keep Iowa agriculture at the forefront while supporting Iowa businesses and communities and safeguarding resources. As challenges evolve – global food demand, human health, pest resistance in crops, safe water – the Experiment Station ensures that Iowa State will continue to generate the knowledge and innovations needed to meet those challenges, true to the university’s motto: Science with Practice.