UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA agricultural experiment Station COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE E - J - WICKSON, Acting D. RECTOR BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA CIRCULAR No. 15. (August, 1905.) Recent Problems in Agriculture. WHAT A UNIVERSITY FARM IS FOR. INTRODUCTORY NOTE. Liberty Hyde Bailey, Professor of Agriculture in Cornell Univer- sity, delivered a lecture for the University of California Summer Session on Friday evening, August fourth, 1905, on " Present Prob- lems in Agriculture." That portion of the lecture which dealt with the question of the purposes of a University Farm is here printed as a contribution to a question of pressing public interest. The agricultural college idea is by no means new; it is at least two hundred years old. In this country the agricultural college, as an established fact, originated about fifty years ago. Year after next will be celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the Agricultural College, near Lansing, Michigan. The first agricultural colleges were estab- lished as a protest against the older kind of education that did not put men into touch with real affairs. The Land Grant Act of 1862 marks one of the greatest epochs in the history of education ; it is the Magna Chart a of education. Its purpose was to give instruction in those subjects and affairs which have to do with real life. And, what are they"? They are largely agriculture and the mechanical arts. As these agricultural colleges were largely a protest against the older education it was perfectly natural that at first they should be separate institutions. About one-half of the agricultural colleges of the Union are sepa- rate from the universities proper. They are doing good work, and I am saying nothing whatever derogatory to them. There are some reasons still given for having separate agricultural colleges. It is said that other courses will attract the young men from the farm. Now, if the agricultural college can 't hold the young men it ought to lose them ; the time is past when we shall put blinders on the young men. Again, it is said that the farm boy will be looked down on, but students will not look down upon him if his work is of equally high grade as that pursued in other courses. Sometimes the agri- cultural college is wanted in a separate locality to satisfy local pride. A locality wants to have an agricultural college and offers induce- ments to get it. This does not consider the merits of the case. In some cases, a broom factory might be just as satisfying to the com- munity. The University idea is coming to be a unifying idea in the community, and all university work should be kept together. The time is past when the agricultural college should be torn out of the university and be set off by itself. The agricultural college is founded on the conception that educa- tion must relate itself to life. Important corollaries follow. In the first place, agricultural education should not necessarily be bound by academic methods. The teaching work in a college really divides itself into two parts, (a) the true college work, leading to a Bachelor's degree; (b) postgraduate work, leading to two degrees, the first of these being the Master's degree, which should be given for experi- mental and investigational work, the work involved in the collection and accumulation of facts, etc., and the Doctor's degree, which should be given for a philosophical consideration of the facts and the collec- tions of data. Two great enterprises have now come into the college — the experi- ment station and university extension. They are not university work in the old academic sense. The extension enterprises form the best illustrations of the leadership the university has now acquired in public affairs. The university is required to do university extension work and it goes beyond the old academic ideals. Agricultural education also rests upon a large and quickened idea of the laboratory method. We are introducing laboratory methods into every school in the country; the kindergarten, manual training, the school garden, and science work — all mean the laboratory method. And now we also introduce the affairs of every-day life into the schools. All laboratories are pedagogically valuable in pro- portion as they are in vital connection with theoretical instruction. No school, whether in California or elsewhere, from the primary school to the university is a good school unless it has laboratory work. The effort is now being made to introduce into every high school in New York a year's work in biology for the first year. All this brings up the whole question of the university farm. The college or university farm developed with the Land Grant Act. In its history it has gone through several phases. It was first con- ceived of largely as a model farm, and of course the model farms became the laughing stock of the farmers of the state; and they will always be. If they are model farms they have little pedagogical use. One farm cannot be a pattern farm for all conditions. There are thousands of model farms. Model farms are good farmers' farms. The state cannot afford to go into the model farm business in connec- tion with university work. In the second place, the farms came to be used merely to illustrate farm practices. In the old days we had museums in our colleges, and persons could go and exclaim as they saw the wonders. We still need museums, but we also have collections with which to work. It is not enough that students merely see things growing or see dif- ferent breeds of animals. They must come nearer than merely to look: they must use and handle. Again, college farms were sometimes run with the idea of making a profit; but you cannot run a farm with profit with student labor. If the State is to make money out of a farm, then it must not be used for teaching purposes, but must be conceived of as an out and out business enterprise. In the next place, there was an idea that these farms ought to represent the commonwealth- —that a farm should be "typical" of the State. It is a mighty poor State that can be typified in one farm. If the State wants a typical farm let it have it, but do not burden the University with it. Put it in charge of a Chamber of Commerce, or other advertising organization. Anybody can farm typical land. Then there was a long period of years when the college farm was used very little or even not at all. Not knowing just what to do with them, many of them have been allowed to drift. Then there came the passage of the Hatch Act in 1887, which established the experiment stations ; and this afforded a means of util- izing the college farm. There are a good many of our institutions which are now carrying farm lands as experiment stations. Of course we should have farms for research. There are two kinds of research work on farms. One kind of research is in farm practice; the other is research in the fundamental physical, chemical, and physiological problems, which must be done on some farm directly under control. Now we have come to the final and proper stage, — the farm must then be a laboratory. Thus primarily it must be a laboratory enter- prise, and the pattern and model idea are only incidental and secondary. If your people do not believe in this idea, then you must educate your people. A college farm is not primarily for the purpose of growing model or perfect crops. I should rather have the opportunity to teach one student by means of a farm than to show one hundred persons a field of perfect pumpkins. If we study plowing in the class room, we must also study it in the field, even if we destroy a crop. We must determine and test the relation of plowing to moisture, aeration, microbic life, and many other questions. It is more important that a man learn how and why to plow than it is for the college farm to grow a crop of wheat. Even if I tore up the drainage on a farm in order to teach it, I want to be able to do it. The botanist pulls up the plant to study it. In learning how to grow potatoes one should pull them up and study the root system. Not long ago I was asked how deep potatoes should be planted in a certain soil. I asked, ' ' How many of you know whether the tubers form above or below the feeding roots," Four or five guessed, but no one knew. But on that fact depends much of the success in planting potatoes. If your students want to see a model orchard, they have a thousand of them in California. We want such an establishment as will allow us to drive our cattle right into the class room. We are this day building a class room at Cornell which will hold stock, and which has seats for the students on the sides. They will study real live cattle, not pictures and models. The young men study those cows and find out why they are good and bad cows. They examine their conformation, etc. These cows are just as much laboratory material as the plants of the botanist or the chemicals of the chemist. Next week, if we should be studying the question of beef cattle, they are brought into the building and the students study them just the same way your students study the stratification of rocks. Ten acres of land to use when I want it, and as I want it, is worth more pedagogically than a thousand acres to look at. The value of a university farm from a university man's point of view consists in its usefulness as a means of teaching. If you do not want to call it a farm, call it land. The better it is as a farm, the better it ought also to be as a laboratory ; but the laboratory utiliz- ation of it should always come first. If you are not using farms as a means of training men you are not using them for university pur- poses. A director of an agricultural college said some years ago when a visitor complained that he didn 't consider the college farm to be a model farm, "I would rather have a good man with a flower pot in a window than have a poor man with a thousand acres of land. ' ' A university farm justified from the university or pedagogical point of view must be made a true laboratory to collate and articulate with the theoretical instruction, otherwise the future will not justify your possession of it.