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In a packed Ruby Rupner Auditorium at the Jay C. Hormel Nature Center Thursday night, a listening session was held for the University of Minnesota’s Future of Advanced Agriculture Research in Minnesota (FAARM).

It was a chance to reveal a little more on what FAARM might look like, but perhaps more importantly, it gave officials a chance to hear from the public in an important step in the facility’s process.

“I think it went really well. It’s great to have the feedback,” said Dr. Brian Buhr, the dean of the University of Minnesota’s College of Food, Agricultural & Natural Resources Sciences. “There’s some excitement and I think we have to recognize we want to work with the community strongly and to be good neighbors. There’s always going to be that question of what’s going to be the impact.”

“I thought it was a really good conversation, good questions,” Buhr said, adding that it was important, “to take the time and learn about what people’s thoughts were.”

After the three-person panel introduction, which included Buhr, Riverland Community College President Dr. Kat Linaker and Assistant Vice President-Planning, Space and Real Estate at the University of Minnesota, Leslie Krueger, the night was opened up to questions from those in attendance.

Questions that ranged from local impact on infrastructure, taxes, education possibilities and construction. They were all valuable, Buhr said, in determining how planning goes forward.

“There’s opportunities for us to consider how we place things, what types of things we put in place,” Buhr said. “Hearing the diversity of perspectives. Really engaging with that local community here. Trying to understand what the concerns are.”

During the panel’s introduction, Buhr, Linaker and Krueger went into the importance of FAARM, how it’s going to create partnerships with Riverland and surrounding colleges and how the process of establishing FAARM has been progressing.

The facility will be located in Udolpho Township, in northern Mower County and south of Blooming Prairie. In order to accommodate the facility, the township board had to rezone the agricultural zone into a research and educational zone.

“We’re used to this kind of stuff, just not at this scale,” said Udolopho Planning and Zoning Chair Holly Naatz.

While many had questions Thursday night on the effects FAARM might have on neighbors and right-of-way concerns, Naatz said it’s helped that people can come to them first and that it is stricter than ordinances in the county.

The reworked ordinance deals with setbacks and animal units, among several other areas, all of which are impacted by what the University of Minnesota is trying to accomplish. A public hearing on the ordinance will be held at 6 p.m. on Oct. 9 at the township hall.

“They’ve been very approachable and we’ve worked together,” Naatz said. “They’ve really tried working with our ordinance.”

For those in the education sector, it also proved exciting and important to be a part of Thursday night’s listening session because of how the processes aligned.

During her presentation, Linaker said that RCC started work on a similar process in 2014 under then president, Adenuga Atewologun. She said work included the development of an idea for an agricultural center on the RCC campus.

Since then, RCC has combined its resources and ideas with the University of Minnesota in bringing FAARM together.

“As a result, our community is involved,” Linaker said.

This will open possibilities through education, something that the University of Minnesota has incorporated from the very beginning of FAARM.

“Really, it’s a discovery center,” Buhr said during the panel discussion. “We want this to be a discovery place.”

After Thursday’s event, RCC Dean of Food and Agriculture Okechukwu Ukaga, Ph.D., said that this project can create a lot of excitement on the ground for what FAARM can accomplish and what can be accomplished through RCC and the collaboration between the two entities.

“We are a community college. We are the community’s college so we are very close to the ground where it happens,” Ukaga said. “It’s very exciting.”

“This is the perfect opportunity for us to do the things we are doing, align with the U and the capacity they have …,” he continued. “It’s just a win-win for the county, a win for the community, for our students, a win for the future. We can be partners.”

This is not to say that there weren’t deep reservations about the project. With a proposed 1,600-acre footprint, there were some who held concerns about the facility and its impact on neighboring landowners and even others who were against it completely.

However, at the same time, Buhr said all of these viewpoints are important to the process.

“What I hope is that people stay engaged,” he said. “As we get more refined, that helps to refine their questions. We want to have those conversations. When we started this, people were concerned. What are we going to do about this?”

There currently is no firm time table to start construction on FAARM, though it is hoped that construction might be able to start in 2027-28. 

The project has just wrapped up its final report of the pre-design stage of the estimated $220 million project and will begin working with the University of Minnesota Board of Regents in determining possible bonding requests from the state legislature.

Already, the Hormel Foundation has pledged $60 million to the project.

After the Board of Regents determines next steps in funding requests, work will begin on schematic design. According to Krueger, of the 1,600 acres planned, the U has secured 1,365 acres with a goal to use the land sensibly and to be “good neighbors.”

“We’re thinking about, what does that look like?” she said. The main message is we will continue working with the local community.”