For the farmers at this agricultural convention in St. Paul, the future is everything …

What’s going to happen next year, tomorrow, we don’t know.

Minnesota Soybean Growers Association secretary Bill Zurn is talking about the uncertainty surrounding plant diseases and pests… things like soybean aphids that can pop up almost overnight and destroy a harvest.

That uncertainty is why Zurn says he’s so happy to have the new, Plant Pathology Research Facility on the University of Minnesota’s St. Paul campus.

The students and faculty that’s going to work in that facility, what they’re going to come up with next year, 10 or 20 years from now is going to benefit all of us and hopefully all of Minnesota.

In Minnesota alone, crop diseases like soybean rust could cost farmers more than a half billion dollars in one year.

Carol Ishimaru, from the U’s plant pathology department, says the threat of those diseases helped bring a number of groups together to build this facility.

This facility is a great example of a partnership between the University of Minnesota, Minnesota Department of Agriculture, and the growers in this state.

Finding out what makes plants sick and how to prevent those diseases will end up saving people a lot of money, and the researchers say those savings extend well beyond farmers.

Work done at the new plant pathology facility will affect everything from corn stalks to oak trees …

It also affects homeowners. They have beautiful oak trees in their yards, we have them in our parks, so they’re very important to us in many ways.

The new facility was built for about six million dollars … a figure Ishimaru says the state will get back almost immediately, thanks to the grants and research money the facility will bring in.

Not to mention the savings farmers will reap not having to battle crop disease.

As well as other farmers, agriculture in general, the forestry and landscaping.

A dollar figure that amounts to quite a bit more than a hill of beans.

For the University of Minnesota, I’m Justin Ware.