Agriculture | Penn Today

Students walking along the Donga boardwalk in Kisumu.

At the intersection of energy and agriculture

Through the Goldsmith Sustainable Agriculture Fund at the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy, Penn researchers are responding to a significant science-to-policy gap.

2 min. read

Aerial view of fields at Penn Vet's New Bolton Center.

Q&A

Getting to the root of it: Why soil matters

Soil specialist Alain Plante of the School of Arts & Sciences explains what soil is, how it works, and why its health matters far beyond plant growth.

3 min. read

Green infrastructure

A roundup of Penn Today stories focusing on green infrastructure on campus, in research, in higher education, and in energy policy.

2 min. read

Applying design to agriculture for a new approach to agroforestry

Penn researchers are leading a multidisciplinary land-use project that blends trees, livestock, and streamside buffers to turn New Bolton Center into a living lab for stewardship agriculture.

4 min. read

Year-round color in a Lansdale garden

Former long-time Penn employee Gates Rhodes and his wife, Gail Jurikson-Rhodes, are spotlighted for their Lansdale garden.

Composting and feeding food waste to animals have big climate benefits, study finds

A study by Zhengxia Dou of the School of Veterinary Medicine and colleagues found that diverting all food waste away from landfills in the U.S. would avoid about 10% of the planet-warming carbon emissions that come from the country’s agriculture sector.

Using satellites, drones, and AI for more sustainable and efficient agriculture

Piotr Lazarek, a fourth-year Penn Engineering and Wharton student from Pawłowice, Poland, won the 2025 President’s Sustainability Prize for Nirby, a real-time farmland management system addressing inefficiencies in fertilizer usage.

5 min. read

By the Numbers

By the Numbers: Penn Vet’s agricultural impact

In addition to excellence in teaching and clinical care for companion animals, Penn Vet makes indispensable contributions to the state’s agriculture sector.

Six Lancaster County farms preserved

Tom Daniels of the Weitzman School of Design says that Lancaster County has the most preserved farmland of all U.S. counties.

Dipti Pitta kneeling next to a Holstein dairy cow.

Could we breed cows that emit less methane?

In a new study, researchers from the School of Veterinary Medicine identified attributes of low-methane-emitting dairy cows that could be used as targets for selective breeding.

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