URBANA, Ill. – This fall, 27 students joined the Jonathan Baldwin Turner (JBT) Scholars program in the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences (ACES). JBT Scholars is a competitive scholarship program open to undergraduate students in all ACES majors.

This week’s 5 Questions Friday features Emma Kuhns, agricultural and consumer economics major with public policy and law concentration. Emma hails from Mason, a small town near Effingham. She is one of this year’s recipients of the prestigious Jonathan Baldwin Turner Scholarship in the College of ACES, and she shares her thoughts about the JBT program.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Bill & Melinda Gates Agricultural Innovations has awarded a grant of $34 million to the Realizing Increased Photosynthetic Efficiency project, an international research effort led by scientists at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. In its 10-year history, RIPE has demonstrated large increases in crop productivity in replicated field trials on the university farm.

William “Bill” Cupps’ contributions to the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences (ACES) continue to be felt today through scholarships, college programs, and communication activities. Cupps passed away on December 2, 2022, at the age of 88.

Josie Rudolphi is a professor of agricultural and biological engineering at the University of Illinois whose research examined suicide among farmers and ranchers, as well as the mental health of their children.

URBANA, Ill. – Cover crops, with their ability to reduce erosion and promote soil health, are being planted across more Midwestern land than ever. That’s according to new University of Illinois research showing cover crop adoption reached 7.2% in 2021, up from just 1.8% a decade prior. The finding is the result of sophisticated satellite-based remote sensing efforts that accurately detected cover crops across 140 million acres of cropland and tracked their expansion over 20 years.

URBANA, Ill. – Renewable energy technologies such as wind turbines and solar panels are gaining traction, but are sometimes met with local resistance because they take up valuable space that could otherwise be used for agricultural production. Agrivoltaics provides a way of creating dual land usage, combining solar panels with crops or grazing animals in the same field. But this emerging technology faces regulatory headwind because the land will no longer be classified as agricultural.