How Can I Sign Kansas Banking PDF

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thank you everyone for coming today as i stated earlier there are several did not chose not to come today they're going to the funeral so that's they will have a lesser committee size today but for good reason uh today we are excited to have a presentation by two folks dan devlin and this says he's the interim head of the western kansas research and extension center and where you where are you office sir well i am well i am officed in well several places i have an office in manhattan and i have one at each one of the experiment stations but most of the time now i'm located in hayes for most of you then also susan metzger susan's we worked with several years ago in the ag committee off and on and now she is over in the department of agriculture no she's over k-state research and extension and then she's been appointed associate director of k-care and kwri and she'll explain all of that so with that the two of you please take it away and thank you for coming well thank you thank you mr chairman you want to go ahead and share our slides okay thank you well first i uh i want to say good morning to all of you it's uh i was telling susan just before we started i think it's 56 degrees warmer this morning than it was uh last monday here in manhattan so it's a welcome change in the weather i want to thank chairman hyland and the members of the house water committee for inviting us to be here this morning we'd like to explain to you uh just really briefly k-state's role in water our mission our rep structure some of our current priorities and then try to explain a little bit about our funding and our budgets that we have for water the i want to introduce myself i've i am a professor of agronomy at k-state for the last 10 years i've served as the director of the kansas center for agricultural resources and the environment and director of the kansas water resources institute and we'll explain a little bit more about what that is as as we go forward our presentation since january i'm also now serving as the interim head for the western kansas research and extension centers which are the ag experiment stations at hayes garden city tribune and colby and then also the regional extension centers at colby and a garden city so i'll stop and i'll hand it over to susan and as soon as you want to introduce yourself and talk about your roles very good thank you dan and thank you again mr chairman and members of the committee my name is susan metzger and i have had a chance to meet many of you in person over the years i previously worked for the kansas water office and then after that was the deputy secretary of agriculture at kda i and now have been with k-state the college of agriculture and k-state research and extension coming up on three years next week so i my role over the past three years with the college has been serving as a senior executive administrator to our dean and director ernie minton and beginning in the month of january now serving as the associate director of k care and kwri so i can help dan out while he is helping out our folks in western kansas and so we'll kind of walk through a couple of slides dan and i will go back and forth on these together and share the presentation we tried to stand shared highlight the things that you noted and meredith noted in her email to us that the committee was keenly interested in hearing about what's our mission and purpose what's our reporting structure what do we do and how do we do it and then what's our budget so real quickly just our mission all of our research and extension and outreach is targeted on making sure we have a safe sustainable strong and reliable food and fiber system and then also that we have uh healthy communities and that we make sure that all of our research is integrated to target towards those things so you'll see that our purpose really does then for that mission so a few years ago we went out throughout the state and we visited with our stakeholders and we asked them what they thought their priorities were moving forward and how could k-state and k-state research and extension help address those and that's where we came up with our five grand challenges which include the global food systems health developing tomorrow's leaders community vitality and keenly interest to this committee water so dan and i are just going to highlight some of the ways that we are addressing that grand challenge and i'll be honest for dan and i was really hard to narrow it down to the types of projects and activities that we wanted to share with you today so we tried to highlight things that represent a diversity of what we do in a diversity of the geography that meets the needs of your constituents as well so with that i am going to turn it over to dan he's going to share a little bit about our reporting structure yes thank you susan we were asked to talk about a report instruction i'll just briefly talk about the about what i think about our what i report to and just administratively susan and i both report to the dean of ag and who's also dr ernie mitten is also the director of k-state research and extension and then of course he he reports to the provost and the president and ultimately then to the board of regents that's how we go about it when i think about what i report and do reports for on a on a on a local or yearly basis i've thrown some of those up here some of those reporting uh year in and year out this does not include maybe some extramural grants like for usda that are that come and go over time so at the top we've got kaycare and kcare was formed back in 1996 at k-state as a center and there was a concern at that time particularly around agriculture that environmental issues in particular water was going to become more and more important and so this office was formed with a director and just a small staff to help direct our faculty and in developing in their priorities as they move forward also helping them find resources and then do repo reporting on our projects to different agencies that needed our work the uh if we go to the bottom there and i'm going to hop around here but the kansas water resources institute that is was formed back in the 1960s it is a federal institute one of 54 state institutes funded by the federal government so we get some federal funding to work on state priorities and i'll go on that a little bit more about that later but part that is for the entire state all the the sort of regents institutions and not just k-state the fertilizer research i have up there on the left-hand corner of our screen is funded we get a little bit of the of the tax on fertilizer most of it goes to the state water plan but a small amount of it comes to k-state for fertilizer research and again i'll talk about what our work is on that and reporting we do a number of projects in partnership on watershed restoration both research and restoration we have a very strong partnership with the department of ag conservation districts and kdhe in that effort and then down in the other corner there we have two funding mechanisms that we use for a lot of our work the uh the oklahockfor program is funded by usda and it's a multi-university partnership where they fund much of our research work going on in the oklahoma aquifer looking at conserving water it's really tight in conserving oklahoma water and that's funded through through that usda program and the last one that just started three years ago is a what we call irrigation innovation consortium it is a partnership between k-state the university of nebraska colorado state texas a m and the irrigation industry and the effort is there to try to work closer with industry getting our discoveries out to them faster for example just to give you an example of what we're trying to do the current and we're going to talk a little bit about irrigation sensors and i'm sure you've heard about that before water sensors that we put into the fields that have been developed that have just really become mainstream in the last five years we we actually developed that technology at k-state in the late 80s and early 90s and really wasn't we really didn't get that adopted by industry for about 10 or 15 years later so this is really an effort to try to get industry involved in our research projects earlier so we can get that those results out and get those implemented by our citizens earlier so i think we go to the next one susan and you're going to handle that one i think okay okay if we go to what i want to do is go over just a few of our priorities and what we're doing on some of those priorities now one of the uh one of the things that we heard when there was the 50-year water vision was being developed and i might say i think you were one of the leaders in developing that 50-year vision and one of the things we heard loud and clear as part of that vision from kansas citizens is that they asked k-state they wanted us to develop more drought crop varieties and also develop alternative crops and at that time that was really really focused for western kansas could we develop crops that were that would take less irrigation and maintain the economy so we've so just some examples and have some funding through the legislature that's really helped us in that effort so i'll give three really four examples today of how we've responded to that request first with grain sorghum we've seen we know that grain sorghum is more drought hearty than corn but over the last uh 20 years we've seen a move from grain to corn basically because of the genetic improvements in corn versus grain sorghum so working with the sorghum industry and was funding through the legislature we kick-started our sorghum program really about seven or eight years ago really to develop new sorghum varieties uh that would be more drought-hardy and more and more competitive with corn so that's one of things we've done we've also had in the last three years we received some funding from the legislature for hemp and we're working on hemp we believe hemp would be a possible alternative crop both under irrigation and dry land in western kansas and then the third one i wanted to talk about today was cotton cotton is not traditionally a crop for kansas it was uh started about first cotton came into kansas about 20 years ago in south central kansas on dry land and the acreage has bounced around some and k-state really hasn't had a big role in that the water vision that laid out a really and directed k-state to to kick-start our efforts in cotton and we've really gotten that started the last three years we received funding the last two years from the legislature 100 000 to get that research started i don't susan i don't believe it's in the budget it wasn't in the water authority budget but that was really useful to kickstart our cotton research uh this past year we had 200 000 acres uh the industry has told us they think we can go to 500 000 possibly in five to ten years and even more than that the big advantage of cotton is there's a couple advantages one the biggest one is we think that we can use from one-third to two-thirds less water irrigation water to grow a cotton crop that would be competitive economically with corn so we can move those corn acres over to cotton and keep our economic output in western kansas the same and also it'll add some diversity of industry out there with cotton gins and other industries for cotton and then the last one i wanted to talk about that we probably haven't reported on before is that we started trying to develop durham wheat for western kansas and we've had a durham wheat is a different brand of wheat than our traditional wheat we've known it's it hasn't ever been grown on the southern great plains before it's more drought hearty than regular wheat and we think it'll be about a dollar a bushel more than we get with traditional wheat so we're getting very close to release releasing at least one durum wheat variety and so again we we think it'll have a great fit particularly on as an alternative on area in irrigated areas particularly in those areas where maybe we can't grow a summer crop anymore because of lack of of available irrigation water so that's really what we're doing in those areas and when we get done i'd be very happy to take any questions that you would have on that we've done a lot of work and of course the beef industry and the dairy industry and swine industry big in western kansas and throughout kansas doing a lot of work to increase feed efficiency which will reduce the impact on water with our beef industry next one susan we've had a uh we've had a large uh this happens to be a field day that we had down in south central kansas years ago and this is we've had a big we've got a big effort in developing new irrigation systems uh particularly improving irrigation efficiency in other words improving the for every drop we will be able to be more efficient and theoretically being able to use less water this happens to be a site and this was one of the water tech farms i'm sure you've heard about but a site that they were we were demonstrating mobile drip irrigation which increases irrigation efficiency and that white bulb there in the middle is actually a possibly the newest technology that's a great type of ground penetrating radar that will allow what allows to detect the water in the soil on the go that would possibly in the future lead to automated irrigation systems that could speed up or slow down irrigation systems just an example of some of the research that we're doing trying to increase our efficiency susan the next one soil health and just this happens to be at a field day in mound ridge this again this was i think in 2019 we were where it may have yeah 2019 prior to the pandemic and this is just a possible study looking at soil health demonstrating the impact of cover crops and to give you an example doing some work on cover crops if we just give an example of of the impact possibly of climate change we most of the climate change predictions for kansas would say we would get the same expecting the same rainfall for kansas in the future it would just come in more intense rain events and so instead of having 10 one inch events in in southwest kansas a year we might have five two two inch events which would mean we'd had more runoff more water loss more erosion the idea was soil health might be in this particular we can improve our soil quality so that more of that water would actually drain in the soil and we'd get less loss so we'd improve our our water efficiency looking at that and some other areas with soil health so again one over the last five years one of the the biggest areas of new research we've had is around soil health and then the next slide uh we're also doing a lot of work in and traditionally we've done that a lot of work in nutrient management and fertilizer research in this particular photo we have dr nathan nelson who is a leader in nutrient management he's actually in this this example he's training one of his undergraduate students in in how to do water sampling and uh some work in in nutrient runoff in manhattan we have a we have what we call we've developed a what we call a watershed field laboratory which is unique to the united states we've had and we're actually studying different and at the present time different nutrient fertilizer application methods and cover crop soil health methods determine the impact on water quality and so we're collecting we've got 25 experimental watersheds and we're collecting the water coming off those watersheds and determining the the impact on water quality the other thing that nathan is heavily involved in in k-state is we are responsible for developing the fertilizer application recommendations or how much fertilizer should a farmer apply to and with with two ideas there one uh to reduce the impact on water and two to to make sure that it's economically efficient and so we're current that's one of our roles we we developed that through research uh virtually hundreds of research projects over the years we're currently doing the first major update in our fertilizer recommendations for about the last 20 years those will be our nitrogen pneumonia recommendation will be re released this year and phosphorus next ear and there'll be considerable changes and really tightening down of our really more science that's went into those recommendations so again i think it'll have a major impact on water quality with those new recommendations next susan uh one of the other things i just wanted to there's obviously you've heard in prior testimony about the the impact of screen bank erosion to kansas and our kansas waterways this happens to be just an example of a one of our researchers at field day explaining we've developed some new very innovative screen bank restoration methods we worked with a group of landowners in the area of between cannopolis reservoir and celina with some new innovative ways a screen bank improvement that would reduce the cost about 80 to 90 percent under less than traditional methods and carries dr bingham's uh her role in that and that whole in that process is evaluating are they going to protect all screen banks long term and we're finding they in some cases they work and other cases are not effective and she's determining what it would be effective and where they would not be affected more really at about the end of her project where we can make some recommendations she's been evaluating those last three years and so probably by the by the by the m we should be by the middle of this year being able to make some final conclusions about where can those be used back to that susan uh we are also working obviously on one of the most critical issues and that is on harmful algal blooms and that's tied to nutrient runoff much of our work on the on the reservoirs has really been tied into watershed restoration what can we do up in the watershed to reduce nutrient runoff into the waterways before they get to the to the reservoirs in this particular instance one of the other things i wanted to bring up is one of things we've heard from kansas citizens and ranchers is there concerns with harmful algal blooms and toxins in bonds and if you've ever and i know you've driven across kansas but if you've ever flown across kansas you know there are literally thousands of small farm pods that are being used for livestock production in the state and again we've heard concerns with uh with the health of our livestock and production and so this happens to so we're doing a couple things right now to work with those producers this happens to be jeff davidson one of our extension watershed specialists and he's actually using uh in this case barley bales where we're putting there's been some indication that we had research our first year looking at add up staking some of those or bring someone's in the ponds and having an impact on reducing harmful algal blooms in small water bodies so we had our first year looking at that last year we're going to do that again here we're just starting a new project where we've had a big effort in extension in helping ranchers install waters behind their pant pond dams and fencing off their ponds to impact of cattle actually getting in the pond so we've had that very successfully were but they still had that concern about harmful toxins in their water getting in their waters and so we're just starting new project i know susan's been involved in that uh developing what we call some sand filters never been done before to help reduce those toxins and other toxins from the water before it gets in as it before it gets into those water so really excited about that we're gonna do some testing with vet med this year to see if the impact of that susan i wanted to talk just a little bit about the the what kansas water resource institute and again it's funded we receive from the federal government about well right at 125 000 a year and then the universities have to match that a two to one so we have to match that with some type of state funding at about 250 000 a year so we fund projects i have a and those are determined we have a advisory committee that consists of water authority members other agencies state agency members as well as faculty members from k-state uh the university kansas and emporia state and so we asked our our faculty to develop uh research uh grant pride they do research uh grants and then we judge those and then that's how that money is distributed out to the university faculty about half the funds end up going over to the university kansas researchers in about about half stay at k-state this happens to be a photo of one of the projects that we funded at the university of kansas by dr ted harris and uh at the biological survey and he's actually looking in this case at these uh he collected water from uh milford reservoir and he's looking at different nutrient levels and in these tanks again looking at the impact of harmful those nutrient levels on harmful algal blooms again funded through the through a cooperative project between k-state and k.u very useful susan did a lot of work again on best management practices figuring out what practices would be best for farmers and ranchers to implement how effective they would be and then helping through our education helping them understand how they can use those practices effectively susan great and i think i'd take the last three projects here um and share them with you before we head into the discussion of our budget so the last three projects i want to share with you uh really represent the strength that k-state research and extension brings by having our ag experiment stations all throughout the state but also having extension specialists presence at the county and district level so truly a statewide presence and as your committee probably has learned over the past uh several weeks and knew beforehand that uh you know in kansas it's there are issues where we're really trying to moderate and find the best uses of our water across watersheds across uses and so this example here is a project that we have underway with the city of wichita and the watershed that contributes to it so representative bishop this is probably something of keen interest to you and representative byers i think if when you have the chance to listen to this it's really an innovative partnership between rural and urban areas so the city of wichita has many developers who are required to apply for stormwater management permits when they're embarking on new development and so the city of wichita actually crafted their stormwater management permit with kdhe in a really innovative way so that developers could actually pay landowners in the watershed above them for practices that would reduce sediment and nutrient runoff heading into the city of wichita through the little arkansas watershed and so it's i started in 2016 we already have 450 acres that have been rolled in no-till in that watershed and really has a great economic benefit also for those developers what's really a win-win you're able to put practices in the watershed that slow sedimentation into the little arc into the city of wichita while still being able to have some economic growth and development in the city another example we'll share uh with you and i know if representative fairchild has a chance to listen to this this will be uh right in his hometown uh so you may have been apprised of some of the challenges happening in the rattlesnake creek basin and a few years ago the u.s fish and wildlife service officially claimed impairment they have one of their most senior water rights at the quivira national wildlife refuge and so it really kicked off an intensive effort of looking in the watershed particularly with irrigation uses and identifying ways to reduce their use and find more efficient use of their water especially at peak times during the year when it's important to the wildlife refuge and so for k-state research and extension we've just now entered into a grant with the nature conservancy that over the next several years we'll have the chance to work with irrigators in that basin and to evaluate various water management techniques so looking at different irrigation techniques different irrigation technology soil management and also k-state helps craft and update each year what we call the cannes sched which is an irrigation scheduling tool so we'll work with the irrigators in that basin to find the best fit for their operation from a technology standpoint an irrigation standpoint but i think key to this particular grant where k-state research and extension is really going to be helpful is establishing a strong peer-to-peer network in that basin so it's one thing for k-state researchers to go out and say you know this is the technology that we've evaluated at our experiment station or seen on water technology farms but the strength of this grant and what in the rattlesnake basin is being able to say go talk to this neighbor he's tried out this particular technology it may work for you and so really strengthening that peer-to-peer conversation and mentorship of what works best and what doesn't from a water management standpoint so the last uh project is one of my favorites it started a few years ago so you may recall from the kansas water vision one of the key priorities was identifying opportunities to strengthen our education related to water in the state so that's what education for folks like you and me at the consumer level but also at the k-12 and youth level so one of the projects that came out from the water vision around the same time there was a high school student by the name of grace roth i know that representative jennings knows her quite well others of you might have met her too she was a high school student at that time and she was looking for her ffa sae project and she wanted it to be around water and so that started what we know today to be the kansas youth water advocates program which is run out of our ag communications department here at k-state and what that does it takes high school students and provides them strong stem education understanding of water resources in the state and pairs that with communication tools so that they can go back into their home communities and have a really strong understanding of the technical side of water resources in their hometown but also have the communication tools to be a really strong advocate for change and solutions related to water so with that we're going to roll quickly into the budget i'm going to take the first slide and then dan's going to drive us on home so first these two pie charts just show you relatively our sources of funding from cooperative extension and our ag experiment stations so not all this funding goes to water but as i mentioned water being one of our five grand challenges on any given year i would say these relative proportions are probably hold true for the way that we receive and expend funds related to water as well so you can see for both cooperative and extension and our ag experiment stations just under 30 of our allocation comes from state sources and the rest then we leverage with local federal and private services as well and then dan's going to tell you a little bit about those other areas of our reporting structure and where that funding comes from okay thanks susan great we i'd like to be able to give you a number of water like susan says but we end up grabbing faculty members as we have a project or need so it changes and they may have other responsibilities also and kaycare that susan and i are part of we have a single director position that's funded out of that and then most of the other funds are either we pull a faculty member as we need him for a project so he's funded through his department and then most of the other funding is some type of extramural grant funding there's a there's a need and a priority and we go out and find those funding uh the watershed projects that we have a lot of that funding support is through uh k-state or we also get a lot of our funding through the rats program at kdhe that in partnerships with them uh the water resource research institute or resources institute again is a combination research funding of federal funds and then the matching funds through our state and local sources the uh and you can see with the irrigation consortium and the oklahockfor program it's a source of of industry sourced by some competitive federal grant programs and the fertilizer research program is funded by a as that part of that fertilizer tonnage fee we get four cents of that for each time then that supports competitive research grants so i think we'll stop there susan would there be any uh we'd be very happy to for any questions or comments or suggestions that anybody they have would be much appreciated so i'll hand that back to chairman hyland you very good information i would ask though that if you would get to me or to our committee your full-time equivalent your the staff numbers and all of that and with the understanding that they move back and forth as needed between different areas but your total staff involved in all these programs would be appreciated okay uh ready for questions we have representative stogsdale thank you mr chair uh very interesting presentation this morning and uh with three degrees from k-state i always like to see that k-state logo at the bottom of all those slides and so on so uh looks like you're doing really good work up there i'm uh interested in what you foresee perhaps as the future for uh aquaculture in kansas uh for instance uh catfish farming that sort of thing susan you want to handle that one i you know truthfully representative i'm not sure that i could give you a good feel that hasn't been something that's really come on the radar it's been off and on susan do you have any thoughts on that when you're at the department of ag you know where i see that having potential or two places uh you know we've had the opportunity to look at innovative ways of ethanol production and sometimes we've seen with the waste streams from ethanol production that we've been able to grow tilapia and so i could see an avenue there also i see a lot of potential for the growth of indoor agriculture in kansas indoor vertical agriculture and so being able to marry the waste streams of the water that comes off of indoor ag with aquaculture could be a potential as well you thank you mr chair we'll come back to her representative reilly thank you when you were talking about farming catfish i would like to bring out that we had a successful oxford uh farming of shrimp and until the restaurant industry really got into bad shape they were doing very well but they were basically taking shrimp all the way from uh very you know nothing that you would see going into the water you can even tell that it was a shrimp and and then growing those shrimp to the point that they were harvesting them and selling them locally and then also to the restaurant industry and that was in oxford kansas thanks okay thank you for that uh representative hazwood have you been able to get on mr chairman can you hear me we can okay thank you um thank you so much for the presentation today i was curious um if there was any conversation with the tribes of kansas and if there's any work in trying to get indigenous students in the agricultural program take that to dan unless you prefer to go ahead susan so i'll touch on it in in two ways representative haswell first of all um you may be familiar uh that a few years ago uh we went to congress to work on the establishment of the protection of the water right with the kickapoo nation so um under the winter doctrine they have the oldest water right in the state of kansas and so but we'd had some challenges just like we had you know as i share the example with the city of wichita and rattlesnake creek basin of being able to manage the use in that tribal area for the benefit of the tribe and the surrounding watershed and so i through congressional authorization we were able to firmly establish the uh quantity of water that should be dedicated to the kickapoo tribe and then how to also manage that with a growing need for the development of small watershed ponds in that basin so the other thing i might mention is that k-state research and extension has been working cooperatively with the haskell indian nation university to identify ways that we can help provide services that we have from our statewide ext nsion programs and help leverage their needs for programming that they might have at their university and part of that then is also looking for opportunities to provide undergraduate research for their students so we're still really i think in that um kind of nurturing that relationship and building it out and i would say that would be one of the things that we were really making great strides with before covent thank you so much uh hospitality nation universities in my district so i would love to be part of that conversation to get more students into your program thank you so much mr chairman thank you representative bishop thank you mr chairman i am going to do this uh i would like to ask about atrazine um i know that that's been a great concern in the past and the impression from the presentations that we've had leads me to believe that it's well under control at this point and maybe approaching a problem of the past so i know that's probably nutrient management runoff management well maybe i'll handle that one i we started with atrazine back i started with it about 20 years ago working on develop it was a big became a big concern and surface runoff at that time and uh there were several things that were done in the legislature and we had a special committee in the department of ag at that time and we did a considerable amount of research looking at best management practices and how effective they are and i would say it's still a concern and we have a lot of work going on down in the in the little art watershed in a we're funding a number of farmers there to uh implement best management practices that's a combination of funding from the uh from the state and from the city of wichita and i believe the city of wichita this year is providing about i'm thinking right around fifty thousand dollars towards farmers to do to install accessing bmps we're also using raps funding and then k-state are is really administering finding the farmers and helping them install those practices and the conservation district are are providing the funding through those funding sources so it's still a concern if you're interested i could send you our report this year on the effectiveness if we just uh we've been doing that 10 years now and i could i could forward that to the committee this year's report thank you i did not realize that the localities were as involved with that as they are but it does make sense because there has been as i understand it as severe concern about possible birth defects and so forth um just um that is would be worrisome if it were not being well handled so i'm anxious to see that report thank you yes and our report and and just to go a little bit more uh which at the city of wichita has been a great partner with us and they have the recharge project and they have requirements when they recharge the ground water that they have to to actually remove the atrazine prior to that recharge so the less they get in coming down the river there the little arc river uh the less cost that they have and less concern they have and so that's been that real concern and i should say i have been on national advisory committees with epa in the past on atrazine and again most at that time most of their concern was on ecological impacts and the ones that i was on not so not as much on health impacts at that time thank you for that and we look forward if you just send that report to damian he will distribute it to the committee okay i think representing you found your expert so representative smith thank you mr chairman thank you for your presentation today i have a lot of farmers out in northwest kansas in my area that are experimenting with regener regenerative agriculture trying to improve the the organic matter in the soil increase the biodiversity of the soil and i'm curious what k-state research research and extension is doing to assist these efforts is there any programs that you are either engaged in right now or that you plan on implementing in the future to help out especially the the northwest kansas area or any western kansas north and southwest areas that experience a really significant lack of rainfall and we're really trying to contain and improve our our soil health for production well susan maybe i'll jump on that one first and uh it represented smith it sounds like you almost gave my answer there but i because i think it is important if we look at our soils our native soils in northwest kansas we've lost approximately two-thirds of the organic matter since our forefathers settled out in northwest kansas and with that we've lost some of our our nutrient our nutrient capabilities we've lost quite a bit somewhere so some are top soil with erosion and we've lost some of our water holding capacity and so we are the the biggest move is of course is how do we improve those soils and when we talk about regeneration or improving soil health and and that is one of our i would say one of the key new programs that we've done in soils over the last five to ten years we've got probably preeminent work in cover crops in the great plains it's been headlined out of garden city that we're still doing we've got a major project between out on the hb ranch between haze and gardens and colby that we're looking at the trying to to graze some of those cover crops for example additional income off of those to make those uh more economically effective so we've got all the way from looking at nutrients to mixes of cover crops to the impact on water quality so yeah we've got a large program started on that and it's continuing on that susan do you have anything to add to that yeah dan i might just mention uh that also we have um through a gift from a gentleman by the name of harold lonzinger uh several hundred acres of property in osborne county that his intention of the guest gift was to look at sustainable ag production research techniques moving forward mr lonzinger is still alive and actively managing that property so we're looking at research cooperatively with them now but long term that property in osborne county really represents a great space to test regenerative ag techniques thank you thank you mr chairman representative byers thank you mr chairman uh my question is regards to the youth advocate program uh first of all this has been fascinating for me to learn all this stuff for 28 years i worked at wichita north high school which sits right on the banks of the little arkansas matter of fact so close that canoeing and kayaking is a part of the pe program there when you're doing outreach to school groups to try to become involved with this how much impact are you looking at as far as urban schools go there's over 2000 kids there at north high school and i can imagine this would be a program to be a great interest for our science teams that are there absolutely so i can share with you that the youth water advocates program is recruit recruited throughout the state so any high school student that's interested in applying for the program can we typically run that once per year a little different during coved but it gives the students all throughout the state a chance to apply they have learning modules on their own but then they also come and have a chance to stay on campus in the dorms for a few days and hear a variety of presentations and then they commit to taking on their own project throughout the course of the year and reporting back on that so we've had students from emporia the kansas city area and also more rural areas especially in western kansas for the kids that have participated in those programs so far i will mention for down in your area and also the kansas city area that we've seen more urban high schools commit to ag education and having an ffa program and oftentimes those students are really interested in indoor ag and i think really kind of the areas of agriculture that represent some great opportunities for them to become engaged uh and you know practice some of their technical skills in an urban setting too related to agriculture so uh maize being one of our most recent uh urban area ffa programs uh so i see lots of opportunities for engaging there i might also mention that the school system in olathe has a really innovative program where students can go through their traditional education but then also sign up for intensive courses uh related to engineering energy efficiency and then they have a new track related to innovative agriculture and so those students are really interested in looking at indoor agriculture and even you know robotics and things like that that i think our next generation students are really going to bring to bear for us in agriculture thank you thank you i have a few questions now the uh the cover crop which uh representing smith talked about one of my neighbors actually out where i live is one of the forerunners in this and you may know him richard phi is doing a great deal of research in this area so and maybe we ought to bring him in and just have a talk someday he's really do you know him sir i know richard really well he was a undergraduate student at k-state got his degree in agronomy and then under our program when i was on the faculty there in the department he was one of our masters students got his master's degree in agronomy and we've been we've been friends since then and his uh his business has it's been incredible what he how innovative richard is so yeah i know richard very well yeah we have visited his facilities it's amazing what he's doing down there so i think he may be one that we could bring in and it'd be good information for everyone especially in this regenerative area so with that now you mentioned cotton uh i think it was last year the year before the group came in gave us an overview on cotton production in the state if i remember right we're ranked now number four in cotton production is that a true statement you know i i you know i've seen those numbers and in fact today the uh we have the great plains cotton meeting in in kansas this year again last year was in which thoughts we're sponsoring it again in kansas but we're in there somewhere we're behind texas and oklahoma quite a bit but we aren't beco becoming a major cotton industry and our cotton quality keeps getting better and better you know the the lint length and we've got some we met with there's just a lot of issues that are out there we met with nrcs and and the risk management agency in january asking them what they needed and they research-wise and they need there's a number of things that they need so there's just lots and lots of questions there's uh but yeah we have the potential to be a major cotton state we are we already becoming a major cotton state it was fascinating when they gave the presentation and to learn that cotton is very susceptible to elevation so the further they went up on the the slope there uh the quality went down so it had to stay at a lower elevation to grow the cotton which i found very fascinating but i found i found it fascinating that we're actually growing better cotton quality and quantity in southwest kansas than they are in northern texas now and part of that's that elevation thing there good good one last question for me that is uh you mentioned the durham wheat and i listened to an economic picture update from uh mr featherstone dr featherstone a couple weeks ago and he essentially was saying that uh wheat will no longer be a viable crop in the state because of the lack of income from it so do you think your durham week may have a chance in the new in the new world well we we think there's i met with a group with our wheat breeders a couple of weeks a couple saturdays ago and we went over wheat you know where wheat was and there's and we were really talking in that meeting about specially wheat sweet like durham that might not be a million acres but maybe it's a hundred thousand acres of high income and particularly if it can be tied into some area irrigated wheat areas and so we think it has potential if you could grow the same yield and get it with less water and get a dollar or two a bushel more for it that could possibly be we i haven't given up on wheat yet in kansas well you may want to go beat up on ernie a little bit and convincing well i'm not even sure everyone knows about the one things we have i was a little hesitant to even talk about durham wheat today just because this is one of those new things and when you come and talk about it then you know we're not right we're not quite at the point where we where we're ready to release it yet and so you hate to get the get the industry all ready for it if you don't know if it's going to this is something completely new for us okay that's great thanks for sharing that i have another question from representative bishop between my glasses and my earrings and the strings to the mask i'm i'm i keep wanting to say and for my next act um i have a question about hemp about two years ago i think it was probably 2019. we had the legislators in south central kansas had a tour of the john c peare um research station and and they were just at that point embarking on some tests having to do with hemp and i was wondering if what the progress on that was or was it not haven't heard a bit about it well i i'm not the hemp researcher but i've heard our leader down at the pear center give at several several different meetings and he talks about where the research is on hemp in kansas and what they're and it's really impressive what they're doing and there is going to be a place for hemp probably in the state uh whether it's whether it's going to be big dry land acres out in western kansas i'm not sure if that's going to be the case or if we know now do you know susan any more on that well what we could do representative bishop is share with you some of those most recent presentations that our faculty down at the pear center have put together related to him because like dan said it really is impressive especially the varietal research they've been able to do in hoop houses in protected environments uh and then comparing that we have uh hemp research in eastern kansas and olathe and also in western kansas around the colby area so being able to share maybe just some presentations of what we found so far and also a real opportunity is our vet med program is also now partnering to get some seed sources from that pear center to evaluate the potential for hemp as a as a feed source for cattle and um seeing what the nutritional benefits are and any um you know repercussions that might kind of introducing that as a feed source so exciting stuff on the horizons we share with you what we have so far that would be good thank you thank you mr chairman i just would like to comment that when we got that tour there was a very detailed explanation of the limitations and the restrictions and how the basically the research basis scientific basis for how that research was going to proceed and it sounded like it was going to be very very difficult to do but i'm glad to see that we're making progress thank you thank you representative riley thanks thank you mr chairman just was wondering about getting a little update on the wheat that you were talking about since summer county is the wheat capital uh we would like to i know there's a test plot that someone was doing on a strain of wheat variety of wheat that basically was like a grass that didn't need to be regrown or replanted every year it was a little shorter are you familiar with that research i i am familiar that's a wheat variety that's being that was it was a type of wheat grass that was released by the land institute in celina and so yeah i have a little bit of it and we've cooperated some with him on that but again it's been released and i probably don't know a lot more about it than that thank you you see no further questions uh both of you fantastic presentation thank you for spending the time with us today and we look forward to receiving the other information okay well thank you thank you well committee that's all we have for the day so we are adjourned