Welcome to Food for Thought
This week in our Food for Thought roundup, we’re excited to share Temple Grandin’s nomination for the Cattle Feeders’ Hall of Fame and encourage you to vote. We’ll also look back at CSU’s agricultural history and spotlight CSU Extension interns who are tackling real-world challenges. Plus, we’re featuring research on green roofs, animal welfare, and cattle prices. Keep reading for these stories and more.
Vote now: CSU’s Grandin up for Cattle Feeder’s Hall of Fame honor
Temple Grandin, CSU professor of animal science and internationally recognized expert in animal welfare and livestock handling, has been nominated for the Cattle Feeders Hall of Fame 2027 Industry Leadership Award, one of the cattle feeding industry’s highest honors. The CSU community is encouraged to vote in support of Grandin through August; if selected, she will be recognized at the 2027 National Cattlemen’s Beef Association CattleCon in Nashville in February.
Happy 150th, Colorado!
On August 1, Colorado marked its 150th birthday. Did you know the University is actually older than the state? Founded in 1870 as Colorado Agricultural College, its mission was to make higher education accessible to everyone. In the late 1800s, as the Second Industrial Revolution began, the school focused on agricultural innovations to help boost economic growth and quality of life as the country expanded west.
Learn about how the Colorado Agricultural College contributed to Colorado’s history and how the University continues to contribute to the state today in the Spring 2026 issue of STATE magazine.
Here are 150 ways CSU has made Colorado (and the world) a better place since 1876
Through its land-grant mission, CSU has helped shape Colorado’s economy, communities and agricultural industries for generations. From advancing agricultural innovation through the Agricultural Experiment Station, the Ag Innovation Center and agrivoltaics research, to supporting growers through Palisade peach research and the Soil, Water and Plant Testing Laboratory at CSU Spur, and engaging the public through destinations like the Flower Trial Gardens, the C.P. Gillette Museum of Arthropod Diversity and even Cosmo the corpse flower, CSU’s impact can be found across the state.
The 150 most notable Coloradans of the last 150 years
This list wouldn’t be complete without Temple Grandin, CSU professor of animal science, is a key figure on this list. She designed livestock handling facilities used worldwide. For over 30 years, she has taught at the University and speaks about autism and animal behavior at events around the world.
Take a walk through CAS history
Look through archival photos from the Morgan Library to see the university’s early days, organizations, and events that are still around today, like the entomology club, Ag Day, and the Skyline Stampede.
Poultry disease, wildfire, drought: CSU Extension interns get on-the-ground training
This summer, dozens of CSU students are interning with CSU Extension, taking on projects that tackle real-world challenges across Colorado.
Daniela Montalvan Villatoro, a senior in animal science, is interning with the Colorado Avian Health Program. She is helping promote biosecure flocks and track the spread of diseases like Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza. This internship has given her valuable hands-on experience as she works toward her goal of becoming a veterinarian.
In Palisade, Christian McLaughlin, an agricultural biology major, is gathering data in peach orchards for technology that will help farmers harvest peaches at the right time. He is thinking about a future in the fruit industry and has enjoyed connecting with growers and learning more about fruit production.
CSU Extension intern doing local research on Palisade peaches
McLaughlin also spoke with KKCO about his internship, and the unusual weather that’s made this year particularly challenging for peach growers. He’s using XLSOR technology developed by Dr. Ioannis Minas to collect data from peach farms. Farmers are then given that data in a report that outlines metrics like harvest time and fruit quality.
This experience has helped McLaughlin learn about the process, market, and science behind Palisade peaches and agriculture in general. “There’s so many ways we can not only make farming more sustainable but make it more profitable for the farmers as well. So that’s something that’s really important. And that’s why we’re out here doing this research,” he says.
Cultivating Place: High Elevation Balancing Act, Jennifer Bousselot, Colorado State University
Jen Bousselot, assistant professor in the Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture, was featured on the podcast, Cultivating Place: Conversations on Natural History and the Human Impulse to Garden, for her green roof research at CSU Spur. “To be able to use plants in our built environment to help solve some environmental issues just blew my mind,” she said about her first true introduction to green roofs, when she was asked to join an advisory group.
Jen hopes her work will help make green spaces more common in areas. “My greatest hopes are to begin to contribute to the food for humans and the resources for pollinators in our built environment,” she says.
Animal welfare culture starts with plant leadership
At the Meat Institute’s 2026 Animal Care & Handling Conference, Lily Edwards-Callaway, professor in the Department of Animal Sciences, said “leaders set the tone,” when it comes to establishing an effective culture around animal welfare in a presentation called Building a Culture of Animal Welfare in the Harvest Plant.
Edwards-Callaway is an animal welfare expert who earned her Ph.D. in Livestock Behavior at CSU, working with Temple Grandin, before joining the Department of Animal Science as an assistant professor in 2017. She studies how caretaker perspectives affect animal welfare and the economic benefits of improving welfare outcomes.
Cattle Prices High, Margins Tight — Packers Hit with Class-Action Suit
Although cattle prices are strong, margins are still thin. Dr. Stephen Koontz, professor in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, says that the challenge may persist for years:
“One of the things that has to happen on the cattle side is for there to be any sort of expansion in numbers, you actually have to tighten up supplies first. You have to hold heifers back. Be willing to hold heifers back, and then that makes for tighter situations, tighter prices, or higher prices yet before there’s any sort of expansion, and the you know the jury is kind of out on whether expansion is happening. I know producers that are very interested in doing it, and I know producers, especially the further west to go, that simply don’t have the pasture resources and they’re looking to liquidate some animals. So lots of variability.”
Applause, upcoming events, and announcements
- More than 85 people attended the 2026 TAPS field day at the end of July. Participants included producers, the first FFA student team from the San Luis Valley, and a CSU student team. We look forward to seeing the results of this year’s competition!
- Save the Date: CSU’s 45th annual Ag Day will take place on Saturday, Sept. 12. The Nutrien Ag Day BBQ will be from 12-4 p.m. before the Rams take on Southern Utah at 5 p.m. Get tickets and sign up to volunteer.
- With Europe facing extreme heat and forest fires, CSU research on beaver dams could offer solutions. Once nearly extinct, more than 1.2 million beavers now live in Europe.
- If you missed it, our most-viewed social media video ever (produced by Barnfly Productions) features Temple Grandin and Kaelynn Partlow, star of season 1 of Love on the Spectrum, meeting to talk about animals, work, autism, and much more.
- Daniel Burcham, assistant professor in the Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture released a paper with collaborators from New Zealand and Singapore, Quantifying life-history trade-offs in diameter growth for tropical tree species from a large urban inventory dataset in the journal Urban Forestry and Urban Greening.