News

Wiebold is MU Soybean Center’s staff of one

The new University of Missouri Soybean Center has a goal of coordinating soybean research, but its current lone staff person Professor Bill Wiebold tells Brownfield Ag News it’ll be done on a shoestring.

“We will never be very large in terms of staff,” Wiebold said, in an interview with Brownfield Ag News, “so I’m the director, but I don’t get paid to do that; we have a steering committee, they’re all scientists, they don’t get paid to do that.  We’ll probably have one staff person and we’ll make things go.”

Right now the center has no funding and there are no plans for bricks and mortar.  Wiebold says the university will not be able to provide much money for the center, but he says what’s needed can be raised elsewhere.

“We need to reach out to agencies, commodity groups, companies, and so part of what I’m going to be doing the next year is getting that base funding so that we can do even more,” he said.

The purpose of the Soybean Center is to efficiently bring together researchers who have a common focus.

“And what I like about it,” said Wiebold, “it brings applied kinds of research that can be used on the farm within just a couple of years with basic research that may take 10 years or 15 years, really, to see the fruits of that.”

AUDIO: Bill Wiebold (4 min. MP3)