The Dairy Innovation Hub has four priority areas that span all areas of the dairy community. The research, teaching, and outreach activities of the Hub must involve dairy. We strive to support innovative research that will provide solutions to the challenges that will improve economic, environmental, and social sustainability.

Enriching human health and nutrition: 

GOAL: Grow dairy consumption through education, access, healthcare, new products and innovations

• Elucidate physiologic, metabolic or immunologic impacts of dairy components on human health to develop new dairy products for personalized nutrition.
• Complement nutritional research with food science advancements to develop value-added products to serve health needs and dietary trends.
• Design food processing, packaging and delivery technologies to improve product quality and shelf-life.
• Make and apply discoveries that will improve the safety of dairy foods.
• Understand and address barriers and facilitators to dairy consumption, including health benefits, personal preferences, pricing, animal health and welfare, and organizational and government policies.

Ensuring animal health and welfare: 

GOAL: Explore alternative therapies, improve efficiency, reduce animal stress, and enhance consumer trust

• Develop data analytics for animal management that translate to on-farm tools 
• Reduce the incidence and impact of metabolic disorders and infectious diseases at the individual animal and whole-farm levels 
• Improve stress biology and immune function to support animal health and productivity 
• Improve efficiency and use of feeds to improve environmental and economical sustainability  
• Deploy genomic selection and other emerging biotechnologies to improve animal health, welfare, and performance

Stewarding land and water resources: 

GOAL: Technical and field solutions that enable environmental progress and a thriving dairy community

• Research innovative and emerging agronomic and engineering solutions to minimize nutrient losses from agricultural fields to lakes and rivers
• Develop improvements to nutrient management planning (or other tools) to enhance soil conservation and health
• Develop technologies and practices to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, improve air quality, or reduce odor
• Develop new methods for manure and other waste stream capture and reuse, as well as development of alternative markets for waste stream capture products
• Investigate novel agronomic cropping strategies or emerging technologies to improve  land use utilization that also meets conservation goals

Growing farm businesses and communities:

GOAL: Improve profitability and growth opportunities for businesses throughout the dairy economy and promote informed decision-making by consumers and policymakers. 

• Business and financial management strategies and their impacts on costs of production and farm profitability
• Consumer values and behavior related to the purchase and consumption of current or new dairy products
• Successful approaches to entrepreneurship and technology start-ups, including finance models for new businesses
• How the use of big data might improve the efficiency and profitability of Wisconsin dairy-related businesses
• Evolution of US and global dairy supply chains and their implications for Wisconsin companies
• Opportunities in global dairy markets for dairy products and technologies
• Labor needs of Wisconsin dairy companies and strategies to support an appropriately-prepared workforce
• Impacts of proposed dairy policies or environmental regulations on business in the dairy supply chain—and on environmental outcomes
• Future needs for dairy infrastructure, including road networks and export transportation
• *This priority area links to the three other priority areas through the assessment of the economic and business implications of their discoveries