The Dairy Innovation Hub has created an online form, available at dairyinnovationhub.wisc.edu/covid-19-resources/, that gives farmers, dairy processors and the general public a direct line to university experts at UW–Madison, UW–Platteville and UW–River Falls.
Questions should be related to COVID-19 and its impact on the dairy community. Once submitted, questions are routed to representatives at each campus, answers are compiled, and a response is sent back to the requestor. In some cases, questions are elevated to individual conversations by phone or video conference.
“We felt that providing a direct line to Wisconsin’s best dairy researchers was something unique that we could add to the already robust arsenal of resources available to the people we serve,” says Heather White, associate professor in the UW–Madison Department of Dairy Science and faculty director of the Dairy Innovation Hub. “The Hub was designed to support innovative, high-impact dairy research but aims to be nimble and flexible in responding to the changing needs of the dairy community.”
In addition to the online form, resources from numerous industry, university and state agency partners have been compiled on the Hub’s new COVID-19 resources page.
The Dairy Innovation Hub, which the state of Wisconsin is supporting to the tune of $7.8 million per year, harnesses research and development at UW–Madison, UW–Platteville and UW–River Falls campuses to keep Wisconsin’s $45.6 billion dairy community at the global forefront in producing nutritious dairy products in an economically, environmentally and socially sustainable manner.
