Adam Leise helps his father on their family farm in Hartington, Nebraska, in addition to working full time with the university. He helps manage their farm using his agronomic, economic and extension background, as he plants, harvests, finds the best prices for fertilizer and conducts on-farm research.
“Farming makes me a better researcher and research makes me a better farmer,” Leise said.
Leise is the on-farm research network manager for Nebraska Extension stationed at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He earned a bachelor’s degree in agricultural economics in 2019 and a master’s in agronomy in August 2024 from Nebraska. The next month, Leise was appointed Nebraska’s on-farm research network manager.
In his role, Leise oversees all on-farm research projects that Nebraska Extension educators conduct across the state. This means acting as quality control for every research project conducted by extension educators, a duty that often requires meeting with professors at the university to ensure planned projects have the best chance of producing results that will mean something.
He also bears the responsibilities of securing funding for educators by writing grants, representing Nebraska Extension and its educators at field days and analyzing on-farm research data to make reports that can inform the work farmers and researchers conduct in the future. But as the seasons change, Leise’s work responsibilities shift as well, so his focus is constantly shifting to best serve extension educators.
While Leise appreciates many parts of his job, he particularly enjoys opportunities to speak with farmers about the economic and numbers side of agronomy.
“Seeing those simple thresholds and simple return on investments that we find – it's one of my favorite parts,” Leise said. “As a farmer too, I understand that economics and agronomy have to be of equal weight. We can't have one out-balance the other, so that's the part I love talking about.”
Leise’s farming background contributed to his passion for pursuing a career in agronomy, but his studies at Nebraska solidified his passion for serving farmers through on-farm research. As a student working alongside the Department of Agronomy and Horticulture’s faculty, Leise saw the department’s commitment to preserving land for future generations and how research impacts farmers.
“The entire agronomy department prioritizes resource management, future water quality, soil health and in the efforts we are undertaking to ensure that the land that we have now will end up better for the next generation,” Leise said. “I think on-farm research captures many ideas in one program, which is awesome.”
In August 2025, he became an Extension Educator Department Affiliate, further extending his relationship with faculty and staff within the Department of Agronomy and Horticulture.
“I worked pretty closely with the department already; being a recent graduate, I knew a lot of the faculty still and worked with them side by side in some projects,” Leise said. “The affiliate status is really sort of like an official badge that signifies that relationship. But the relationship has been there for quite a while.”
Leise is optimistic that his new involvement as an affiliate with the department will open the door to student collaborations with extension.
“One cool thing that we are trying to work on is creating a pathway program for students who are interested in on-farm research or helping conduct it,” Leise said. “And so this includes myself presenting in courses, working with some of the faculty here and then presenting internship opportunities for students this summer, in which they can manage a few projects starting in that spring semester and then moving into the fall semester with data analysis. So I think that'd be a great opportunity for collaboration between extension and the department.”
Leise hopes this pathways program would help students understand what project management looks like from start to finish, how to work with farmers and learn about the many agronomy careers that students might initially overlook, like drone piloting, imagery analysis and other jobs encompassed by digital agriculture and precision agriculture.
“Those focus areas are booming right now, and the more we can get hands-on experience for students to be involved in real life scenarios, the better,” Leise said.
