National Agriculture Week 2001

Contacts:
Mark Honeyman, Research Farms, (515) 294-4621
Brian Meyer, Agriculture Communications, (515) 294-0706

ISU RESEARCH FARMS: WHERE IOWANS RECONNECT WITH AGRICULTURE

Editor's Note: Higher resolution images are available. Please contact the Agriculture Communications name listed above. West Hancock Kanawha first-graders get an earful about corn from ISU's David Rueber.

Dear ISU Research Team, Thank you for allowing us to tour your farm. We learned a lot! We never knew that so many things could be made out of corn, soybeans, pigs and poultry. Thanks again! -- Alissa Brady, Lisa Peters & Wes Rueter, Marcus-Meriden-Cleghorn Schools The letter, sent by grade-school kids to Iowa State University's Northwest Research and Demonstration Farm, is evidence that ISU's farms are more than research plots. Not that plots aren't important. Each year more than 100 researchers test their ideas on tens of thousands of plots on 15 farms around the state. But the farms have other dimensions. They are places where children use their five senses to learn where their food comes from. Where more than 11,000 visitors are welcomed each year. Where green thumbs get new ideas for gardens. Where data from weather stations are uploaded daily to the Internet. Where career events help young people think about agricultural opportunities. Where the seeds of rural development are nourished, including, at one farm, a small-business incubator. Where attention is paid to topics as diverse as organic farming and alternative energy, as well as region-specific crop and livestock studies. The diversity gets Mark Honeyman thinking about the role ISU's farms play in changing times. "Agriculture permeates Iowa's culture and consciousness," says Honeyman, who's been the farms' coordinator for 15 years. "Yet fewer people today have traditional agricultural backgrounds. Even those who live in rural areas don't necessarily know anything about growing corn or feeding pigs." As the number of farms and farmers continues to shrink, Honeyman sees ISU's farms as public places analogous to parks or wildlife areas. "Perhaps that's one role the farms are fulfilling -- bringing agriculture back into people's lives," he says. "They can be places where visitors connect or reconnect with the land and the culture of food production." The farms will never be mistaken for Terrace Hill or other tourism sites. They are humble places. But to those who care to keep pace on progress in agriculture, they are well-kept places of work. "They'll never be living history farms," Honeyman says. "They are places for high-quality, high-integrity research, the results of which can be applied today." The ISU farms are serving a dual constituency -- ISU researchers and the public. "They can help strengthen a connectedness that makes local communities better, our researchers better and ISU better," Honeyman says.

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