REPORT ON THE STATE AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATIONS, 1957 By E. C. Elting, Deputy Administrator for Experiment Stations, This report gives a brief summary of scientific research at the State agricultural experiment stations. It has been prepared in accordance with the provisions of law that the Secretary of Agriculture provide such a report to Congress annually. It documents the past year's fiscal and operational activities at the stations in tables appearing in the pages that follow. Since wide circulation is given research findings at the individual experiment stations in the form of periodicals published at monthly, bimonthly, or quarterly intervals, and in annual and regional reports, summaries on significant research findings are not included. Inquiries concerning these or on any phase of an individual station's researches should be addressed to the Director of the State Agricultural Experiment Station, whose name and address will be found on the inside back cover page. SCIENCE SERVING AGRICULTURE Agricultural research in the United States is a nationwide scientific undertaking in which the Federal and State Governments, farmers and farm organizations, marketing groups, private industry, research foundations, and citizens' organizations join hands "to acquire and diffuse" new scientific knowledge for the benefit of agriculture. Agricultural research has been responsible for many scientific discoveries whose significance extends far beyond improving the efficiency of farming. For example, vitamin research and the entire field of chemical research dealing with human nutrition was pioneered by agricultural experiment stations and the Department of Agriculture. So was the field of soil microbiology which has played an important role in providing mankind all over the world with a wide range of lifesaving antibiotics. There are many other areas of research of wide public benefit that had their beginning in agriculture. But the primary purpose of agricultural research is to promote technological advances in farming, which have played so large a part in providing our high standard of living. Abundant production on the farm has long been recognized as the essential ingredient of industrial strength for a nation. A PUBLIC SERVICE Although there is the closest cooperation with many private institutions and industry, agricultural research has, since the earliest beginnings, been very largely a public enterprise. A high percentage of the agricultural research done in this country is publicly financed, either by direct appropriations of the Federal Congress to the United States Department of Agriculture, or, in the case of the individual State agricultural experiment stations, by Federal-grant payments and appropriations made available by State Legislatures. The two parent measures under which public demand for increasing agricultural knowledge was enacted into Federal laws were: (1) The Act of May 15, 1862, "An Act to Establish a Department of Agriculture," and the Act of July 2, 1862, known as the Land-Grant Act, "donating public lands to the several States and Territories which may provide colleges for the benefit of agriculture and the mechanic arts." In a few years the newly established colleges learned through practical experience that little scientific information pertaining to agriculture was available for teaching agriculture in the newly established colleges. In the Department of Agriculture it was also recognized that the scientific findings growing out of the researches of the newly formed research agencies in the Department needed further experimentation and trial in local areas. Research recommendations had to be adapted to differences in climate, different soil conditions, and other local variations. So the land-grant college and Department of Agriculture leaders, along with the farm organizations of that period, urged Federal legislation that would encourage the States and Territories to establish agricultural experiment stations. Out of this grew the Hatch Act of 1887. Under it each State and Territory eventually established an agricultural experiment station. The Hatch Act of 1887 became the foundation stone for the close Federal and State relationship in agricultural research that has existed ever since. BASIC AND APPLIED RESEARCH Congress, in 1955, amended the Hatch Act of 1887 to include under one statue (Hatch Act Amended, P. L. 352--84th Congress, approved Aug. 11, 1955) all Federal authorizations for annual Federal-grant payments to State agricultural experiment stations. The amended Hatch Act asserted that the interest of Congress was to assure agriculture a position in research equal to that of industry in order to maintain an equitable balance between agriculture and other segments of the economy. The agricultural experiment stations are charged under the law "to aid in acquiring and diffusing among the people of the United States useful and practical information on subjects connected with agriculture," also to "promote scientific investigations and experiments respecting the principles and applications of agricultural science." The Act of 1955 states specifically that appropriations authorized thereunder make it the duty of the stations "to conduct original and other researches, investigations, and experiments bearing directly on and contributing to the establishment and maintenance of a permanent and effective agricultural industry of the United States, including researches basic to the problems of agriculture in its broadest aspects and such investigations as have for their purpose the development and improvement of the rural home and rural life and the maximum contribution by agriculture to the welfare of the consumer, as may be deemed advisable, having due regard to the varying conditions and needs of the respective States. RECENT TRENDS IN STATION RESEARCH Agricultural experiment stations have over the years recognized the following as essential fields of research activity for which they are made responsible in the Hatch Act: 1. Fundamental research regarding plants, animals, and the various areas of science as these relate to the solutions of problems in agriculture. 2. Developmental research that encourages application of findings of basic research as these apply to farming. 3. Research that establishes the economic feasibility of adopting new practices growing out of research. 4. Research to determine the feasibility of adopting technological developments and the adjustments that will be required by individuals and communities as a result of technological change. 5. Service research that aids individual farmers, groups of farmers and communities to solve their immediate, specific problems. A review of Federal-grant projects at agricultural experiment stations in the past fiscal year indicates a marked percentage increase since 1956 in research concerned with marketing and utilization, farm forestry, botany and plant pathology, animal diseases, agricultural economics, and entomology and zoology. Smaller increases took place in agricultural engineering, animal production, soils and plant nutrition, horticulture, field crops, and human nutrition. COOPERATIVE ASPECTS To meet the needs of the extensive research required in the Federal- and the State -financed establishments raises some underlying questions, such as: How to meet the most urgent problems in the various geographic areas in the different political divisions of the country, how to group the many different types of research undertakings to get results without waste of effort and duplication, how to establish close liaison and cooperative working relationships among the various institutions and individuals engaged in agricultural research, how to finance the required research and obtain competent and adequately trained scientific personnel, and how to provide wide dissemination of the scientific information needed by scientists engaged in research and of the practical results growing out of the research among farmers and the public. The land-grant institutions and the Secretary of Agriculture, who is responsible under the Hatch Act for administration of the Federal-grant payments, have long stressed cooperation and coordination as major objectives. Since their earliest beginnings, the agricultural experiment - 2 |