After years of dreaming and fundraising, construction is underway for a new Research and Learning Center at the Southeast Iowa Research and Demonstration Farm near Crawfordsville.

Ground was broken this fall for the 60-by-80 foot building with a 200-seat capacity and a lean-to that will include a kitchenette and restrooms, as well as overhead doors for the researchers and staff to be able to move equipment in and out of the building. Fundraising efforts were quickly halted by the pandemic in 2020, and the project cost has increased since then. Farm Manager Cody Schneider says their initial estimate was about $300,000 with their final bid coming in around $500,000. The Southeast Iowa Agricultural Research Association is grateful to its member counties and Iowa State University for their support, as well as area businesses and others who financially contributed and a $200,000 Washington County Riverboat Foundation grant they received last fall.

Schneider comments on what this project means for the farm that has been owned by the association since 1987, “It’s been 20 years since we’ve had a new facility here and in 20 years agriculture has advanced exponentially. Equipment has gotten bigger and just the projects have gotten more complicated and so there arose a need from a research standpoint. We need an area where we can help set up these projects, work on or build equipment specific to that project.”

ISU Extension Field Agronomist Rebecca Vittetoe says the research and learning center will be an asset in hosting events including a large high school field day they began three years ago, “I’m really looking forward to having this new building to be able to host different events that we do. Whether it’s our spring or fall field day that we do. just to have a better place because sometimes the weather gets iffy, it might rain, we don’t know that and then it’s always that hard call of, ‘Do we have the field day, do we not?’ But we’d at least have a facility now that we could go inside if the weather is not cooperating.”

The association hopes to have the building completed by this September in which they plan to host a ribbon cutting to thank their supporters and welcome ISU affiliates. You can hear more about the project during Friday’s edition of the KCII Special Agriculture Magazine at 1 and 6 p.m. on air and by visiting the On Demand page at kciiradio.com.