Bluff Spring Fen Nature Preserve in Elgin, an hour northwest of Chicago, benefits from a host of entities working together to meld protecting wetlands and other natural habitats with the needs of people living and working nearby.

URBANA, Ill. – While the t-shirt you are wearing is likely to be made in China, Vietnam or Pakistan, it may be produced from cotton grown much closer to home. The U.S. is a major world supplier of cotton, exporting much of the production to markets in Asia, where it goes into textile manufacturing. However, growing competition from Brazil and the effects of recent trade policies are shifting global market trends. A new study from the University of Illinois investigates how U.S.

Champaign, Ill. – The Prairie Research Institute (PRI) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign has had a positive direct economic impact on Illinois’ economy valued at $667 million for years 2018–2022 and has provided more than 5,300 full-time jobs in the state, according to a recent analysis at a U. of I. research center.

URBANA, Ill. – Inder Majumdar, a graduate student in the Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics at the University of Illinois, has been named a 2023 Farm Foundation Agricultural Scholar. This annual program is sponsored in partnership with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Economic Research Service (ERS).

Urbana, Ill. — The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) recently announced that it is funding a new project led by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign that will address major obstacles to adoption of cover crops in the United States.

Lyle Fettig, professor emeritus of agricultural and consumer economics, died on Jan. 1 at his home in Savoy.

Throughout his career in ACE, Fettig had a passion for teaching and advising. He was honored with the Karl E. Gardner Outstanding Undergraduate Advising award, and he was included in the ACES Academy of Teaching Excellence. He also served as associate editor of the American Journal of Agricultural Economics and was an establishing editor of the North Central Journal of Agricultural Economics.

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.

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.