Agricultural experiment station

An agricultural experiment station (AES) or agricultural research station (ARS) is a scientific

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

The Agricultural University of Iceland^[2] maintains several experiment stations throughout the country.

India

The Regional Agricultural Research Station at Lam of Guntur.^[3]

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 Kingdom

Sutton Bridge Crop Storage Research in

Syngenta's largest R&D center is at Jealott's Hill in Berkshire. Before its current incarnation it belonged to Imperial Chemical Industries.

United States

The

The United States Department of Agriculture also maintains over 90 research locations, including locations abroad. The research stations of the USDA are divided into 5 geographic areas across the United States, each with a centrally located station. Including: Pacific West at Albany, CA, Plains Area at Ft. Collins, CO, Southeast Area at Stoneville, MS, Midwest Area at Peoria, IL, and Northeast Area at Beltsville, MD. Henry A. Wallace Beltsville Agricultural Research Center in Beltsville, is the largest of USDA's research locations at 6,500 acres and contains the National Agricultural Library.^[8][9]

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

Following the footsteps of the Enlightenment rationalism and experimentalism, Germany began to see the rise of agricultural experiment stations, indicating the beginnings of an attempt to merge traditional agronomy with analytical chemistry. In 1840, Justus von Liebig, an influential German chemist and professor at the University of Giessen, published his book Organic Chemistry in its Application to Agriculture and Physiology. Liebig theorized that nitrogen and trace minerals from soil erosion were essential to plant nutrition, and, from this analytical chemistry perspective, simplified agriculture to a series of chemical reactions.^[11] While Liebig's work inspired a generation of analytical agricultural chemists interested in fundamental questions of plant nutrition, founders of early German agricultural experiment stations did not solely seek to pursue questions of soil chemistry, but rather sought to bridge the gap between the two fields of agriculture and chemistry.

The most well-known and earliest German experimental station, or Landwirtschaftliche Versuchsstationen, established was the Mockern Experiment Station, located near the city of Leipzig. Created on September 28, 1850, the Mockern project was spearheaded by three Saxon men: Julius Adolph Stöckhardt, a professor of agricultural chemistry; Wilhelm Crusius, German estate owner interested in scientific agriculture; and Theodor Reuning, the German agricultural minister at the time.^[12] Though all three men took interest in Liebig's scientific approach to soil chemistry, they maintained distinct agricultural and economic focus at Mockern, and rejected a purely laboratory approach to agriculture.^[12] Unlike Liebig, Stockhardt sought the integration of chemistry with agriculturists, rather than a specialization of chemists to come in and do the work. As a landowner who employed chemists, Crusius saw the value of chemical agriculture in economic terms to increase profit, while Reuning's support for Mockern Station represented the beginnings of governmental interest and funding of agricultural experimental stations.

Under Crusius, the Mockern Station submitted a Letter of Purpose in a government application. It specified that the Mockern Station belonging to the Leipzig Economic Society would devote itself to the advancement of agriculture via scientific investigation, through cooperation between practical farmers and scientific professionals. They listed six main research objectives, summarized below:

1. Investigation into conditions of plant growth, mainly that of soil, manure, and fertilization.
2. Analysis of plant fodder and its effects on animal products.
3. Meteorological observations.
4. Cultivation and valuation of rare plants.
5. Agricultural technology testing of implements and machines.
6. Research and creation of agricultural metrics, such as relative values of fodder.^[13]

Japan

The first national agricultural experiment station was founded in 1893 in

The movement to establish agricultural experiment stations in the US can be credited to Samuel William Johnson who taught the first course in biochemistry. The development was recounted by William Cumming Rose:

In 1875, through Johnson's influence, the Connecticut Legislature made a small appropriation to aid the cost of a two year program of agricultural experimentation, to be conducted by Wilbur Olin Atwater at Wesleyan University, in Middletown, Connecticut. Atwater had received the Ph. D. under Johnson's direction... Two years later, the State Legislature approved the establishment of the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station on a permanent basis, and Johnson became its first director... At the start, it was housed in two rooms on the lower floor of Sheffield Hall of Yale University. Later,... moved to a building of its own on Huntington Street in New Haven.^[14]

The Bussey Institution at Harvard University (since 1871) and the Houghton Farm at Cornwall, New York (1876–88), were privately endowed stations. By 1887 fourteen states had definite organizations and in thirteen others the colleges conducted equivalent work.

Federal aid for state experiment stations began with the

• New York State Agricultural Experiment Station
• Moray (Inca ruin)

References

Further reading

• Dictionary of American History by James Truslow Adams, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1940

External links

• Japan National Agriculture and Food Research Organization (NARO)