Agricultural experiment station
Oxford Companion to US History:
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Agricultural Experiment Stations
By the 1880s, industrialization and urbanization in America were generating increasing demands for farm products, while the plains and western states were producing surpluses for a developing international market. At the same time, farmers were targeting the nation's railroads, banks, and capitalists as sources of economic destabilization and proposing a range of moderate to radical actions. The Hatch Act (1887) was part of the government's response to that challenge. This measure allotted funds, initially fifteen thousand dollars annually, to establish agricultural research stations in every state addressing the needs of growers. An Office of Experiment Stations within the U.S. Department of Agriculture coordinated this decentralized system.
Expectations concerning the role of the agricultural stations generated tensions, since their constituency included such diverse groups as farmers, agricultural businesses, and state and federal legislators. Moreover, the close geographical and structural relationship many of them had with the land-grant colleges placed strong educational demands on station personnel. The most effective late nineteenth-century agricultural experiment station administrators, such as William A. Henry of Wisconsin, Eugene Davenport of Illinois, and Liberty Hyde Bailey of New York, balanced these potentially conflicting demands while strengthening their states' agricultural economies and allocating some resources for scientific work. The 1906 Adams Act, for which these leading agricultural administrators strongly lobbied, provided each state with additional funds exclusively to support fundamental agricultural research. The Smith-Lever Extension Act (1914) provided funds to each state to pay county extension agents who would bring farmers the fruits of station work, while simultaneously strengthening the stations as sites of basic research by freeing station researchers from time-consuming extension work.
Most station research was directed toward increasing U.S. agricultural productivity. Plant pathology and economic entomology focused on reducing production losses to diseases and pests, while research on culture methods, fertilizers, and breeding sought to improve production directly by increasing yield. Chemistry, nutrition, genetics, and agricultural technologies were prominent research areas as well.
Over the years, station research revealed close links between basic and applied research and between science and industry. For example, concern for the dairy industry in the 1880s inspired chemist Stephen M. Babcock's research into the butterfat content of milk at the Wisconsin experiment station, resulting in a butterfat test that enabled producers to provide a richer, more standardized product. The discovery of vitamin A by Elmer V. McCollum at the Wisconsin station and by T.B. Osborne and L.B. Mendel at the Connecticut station originated in research on livestock nutrition. The genetics of corn was studied as both a basic and applied science at various stations beginning in the 1910s. At the New York station in the 1920s, geneticist Rollins A. Emerson trained future Nobelists George W. Beadle and Barbara McClintock. At the Illinois station the development of hybrid corn, perhaps the single most important contribution of the experiment stations to American agriculture, bettered the yield and uniformity of the corn crop while increasing growers' dependence on the seed companies that had collaborated closely with the experiment station on the development of hybrids. Later technological innovations—such as the mechanical tomato picker and cotton picker, developed cooperatively among experiment stations and manufacturers—fostered more efficient cultivation and harvesting by the larger producers while throwing many farm laborers out of work.
From the mid–twentieth century on, critics of the agricultural research system, pointing to such developments, argued that experiment-station research had come to serve corporate needs more than those of American farmers. Such criticism, in turn, provoked many station scientists and government administrators to defend the station system's contributions to world agricultural production.
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Agricultural experiment station
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The examples and perspective in this article may not represent a worldwide view of the subject. Please improve this article and discuss the issue on the talk page. (December 2010) |
An agricultural experiment station is a research center that conducts scientific investigations to solve problems and suggest improvements in the food and agriculture industry. Experiment station scientists work with farmers, ranchers, suppliers, processors, and others involved in food production and agriculture.
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Contents
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Locations
Canada
In Canada, about 50 per cent (1988) of the experiment stations are controlled by the Canadian government. The Central Experimental Farm in Ottawa is the headquarters of the federal system. Private industries, universities, and agricultural colleges control the remainder of the stations. Each province has a number of provincial stations.[citation needed] The University of Saskatchewan has extensive agricultural experimental land.
Greece
The Benaki Phytopathological Institute[1] conducts experiments pertaining to plant health in many locations throughout the mainland, as well as in Crete and on other Greek islands.
Iceland
The Agricultural University of Iceland[2] maintains several experiment stations throughout the country.
Japan
Japan has five agricultural experiment stations of Independent Administrative Institution of National Agriculture and Food Research Organization, former national stations, and many other prefectural stations all over the country.
New Zealand
New Zealand has agricultural research stations at Ruakura, Winchmore and Invermay.
United States
The Hatch Act of 1887 authorized the establishment of an agricultural experiment station, to be affiliated with the land grant college of agriculture, in each state (7 U.S.C. 361a et seq.). Research done at these stations underpins the curriculum of the colleges, as well as the programs of the Cooperative Extension System.[1]
The United States of America has more than 50 stations (1988), run by about 13,000 scientists (1988). Each state has at least one main station, usually located at and associated with a land-grant university. Many states have branch stations to meet the special needs of different climate and geographical zones in those states.[citation needed]
The United States Department of Agriculture also directly maintains several experiment stations, including the Henry A. Wallace Beltsville Agricultural Research Center in Maryland and the U.S. Sheep Experiment Station near Dubois, Idaho. The Beltsville station contains the main building of the National Agricultural Library. The United States National Arboretum in Washington, DC is a division of the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center.[citation needed]
The U.S. experiment stations are state institutions. However, the federal and state governments cooperate in funding the research done at the stations. The states provide about 60 percent (1988) of the government money. Additional income comes from grants, contracts, and the sale of products. The stations receive a total income of more than $1 billion a year.[citation needed]
U. S. Virgin Islands
The University of the Virgin Islands maintains an experiment station [3] on the island of St. Croix, working on agroforestry, aquaponics, biotechnology, forage agronomy, and tilapia farming, among other areas of research.
Research
Station scientists study biological, economic, and social problems of food and agriculture and related industries in each state. They investigate such areas as crop variations, soil testing, livestock, processing and animal technology, and other advanced technology in food and agriculture. They also work with specialists called extension agents. These specialists help inform famers about developments in agriculture. Most agricultural experiment station scientists are faculty members of the land-grant universities.
History
Japan
Hokkaido Development Commission founded the very first agricultural experiment station of the country in Sapporo in 1871, under the advices of O-yatoi gaikokujin(hired foreign experts).
The first national agricultural experiment station was founded in 1893 in Tokyo, Sendai, Kanazawa, Osaka, Hiroshima, Tokushima, and Kumamoto under the Edict No.18.
And, 1899 act for prefectural agricultural experiment stations supported prefectural movement to establish agricultural experiment stations all over Japan.
United Kingdom
One of the oldest agricultural experiment stations is the Rothamsted Experimental Station, located at Harpenden in Hertfordshire, England, where the great statistical geneticist Ronald Fisher was inspired to important advances in the theory of statistical inferences and genetics.
United States
The first state agricultural experiment station in the United States was organised in 1875 at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. It was supported by private donations and state funds. Organization and method were modeled upon European stations and the work of state chemists. By 1887 fourteen states had definite organizations and in thirteen others the colleges conducted equivalent work. The Bussey Institution at Harvard University (since 1871) and the Houghton Farm at Cornwall, New York (1876–88), were privately endowed stations. Federal aid for state experiment stations began with the Hatch Act of 1887. The Hatch Act authorized direct payment of federal grant funds to each state to establish an agricultural experiment station "under direction of" its land-grant college. Land-grant colleges had been established under the Morrill Act of 1862. The aid was increased by the Adams Act (1906) and the Purnell Act (1925). The provisions of the original Hatch Act and of later legislation providing increasing funds were combined in the Hatch Act of 1955.[citation needed]
The McIntire–Stennis Act of 1962 authorized forestry research studies at experiment stations. The federal government takes part in the experiment station program through the Cooperative Extension Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The department coordinates research activities among the state stations.[citation needed]
See also
References
Further reading
- Dictionary of American History by James Truslow Adams, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1940
External links
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The Oxford Companion to United States History. © 2001
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