Wakefield, RI.
By Michael A. Rice
At a time when we are in the midst of searching for investment opportunities to stimulate our state’s economy, it is useful to look at some of our past successes as a foundation for building our future. Nowadays, Governor Carcieri is looking toward boosting investment in Higher Education as one of his strategies of moving Rhode Island forward in high technology arenas, but this is nothing new for Rhode Island. Back in 1862, when General Ambrose Burnside was serving with the Army of the Potomac and making his pop-culture fashion statements, the United States Congress passed the First Morrill or Land Grant Act opening up vast tracts of federal lands in the West for sale or use by the states and territories for the establishment of Colleges of Agriculture and Mechanical Arts (or engineering) throughout the country. This congressional action undertaken during a time of war, looked to higher education to aid post-war reconstruction and economic development in largely agrarian America.
Tiny Rhode Island of course had no federal lands, so our Land Grant was in the State of Kansas. Funds derived from the sale of those lands were directed by the General Assembly to Brown University, establishing it as Rhode Island’s first Land Grant University. During the next two decades of post-war reconstruction, Land Grant funds were used to support programs in mechanical arts at Brown University, which had a long tradition of classical studies. This use of Land Grant was deemed appropriate because of the overwhelmingly industrial nature of Rhode Island’s economy in the mid-19th century.
It wasn’t until the mid-1880s at a time of national discussions about ‘scientific agriculture’ that a group of farmers and civic leaders including textile magnate Rowland G. Hazard from South Kingstown (who incidentally held stock in the Union Pacific Railroad, founded one of the first trout farms in America and promoted fishery restoration by dumping hatchery-reared fish from railway trestles) approached the General Assembly with a proposal to establish an agricultural experiment station. They pointed out that Rhode Island’s economy is not just textile mills and manufacturing plants. There was a need to boost regional agriculture to support the growing urban immigrant population and an equal need to boost the rural economy. After a couple of years of political wrangling and the passage of the federal 1887 Hatch Act establishing a national system of agricultural experiment stations, the Land Grant funds were redirected by the General Assembly to establish the Rhode Island Agricultural Experiment Station in 1888 by the purchase of the Watson farm in Kingston. Four years later using funds from the Second Morrill Act of 1890, the General Assembly released funds for the establishment of the Rhode Island College of Agriculture and Mechanical Arts, the forerunner of the University of Rhode Island. To this day, the late 18th century whitewashed Watson farmhouse stands at the heart of the University of Rhode Island as a quiet monument to the university’s humble beginnings.
To many people, the Land Grant university system is a powerful symbol of economic development through programs for diverse populations of common people. For example, one of the most significant features of the Second Morrill Act of 1890 was that the original Land Grant schools could receive the additional funds only if they admitted blacks into their programs or if they provided separate but equal agricultural higher education to black students (the latter option preferred south of the Mason-Dixon Line). This development led to the education and employment of important agricultural scientists like Booker T. Washington and George Washington Carver. Rhode Island State Representative Melvoid Benson of North Kingstown has remarked on several occasions that the Land Grant University System has historically been one of the most significant government programs ever developed to uplift the economic status of many under-represented minorities.
Browsing through many of the earliest annual reports of the Agricultural Experiment Station, one can find an amazing array of research projects that did indeed bring ‘scientific agriculture’ to Rhode Island. From the earliest days, these projects defined ‘Rhode Island Science’. There were experiments on controlling potato blights, experimentation on fertilizers for our particularly sandy soils, corn breeding, orchard crop experiments, as well as poultry feed development and poultry breeding, especially with Rhode Island’s own Rhode Island Red. One of the more interesting early efforts of the Agricultural Experiment Station was the establishment of Rhode Island’s first marine laboratory in 1896 in the village of Jerusalem by biologist Dr. George W. Field. Dr. Field’s main charge was to find out the reason for the decline of oyster populations in Point Judith Pond. After four years of work, he reported that it was likely that low oxygen conditions in the pond were probably responsible (however, it is likely that aniline dye effluents from Hazard’s woolen mill upstream on the Saugatucket River might have been a contributing factor). Dr. Field’s recommendation of opening a permanent breachway at the mouth of Point Judith Pond was eventually accepted by the General Assembly, eventually leading to establishing Galilee as one of America’s most lucrative fishing ports. At the site of the original AES Marine Station, the Department of Environmental Manage still maintains its coastal fisheries laboratory with projects aimed at restoring shellfisheries, most recently in response to the North Cape barge oil spill.
One of the most important aspects of the modern Land Grant University is the Cooperative Extension Service, in which faculty and professional staff bring the findings of the university research out to clientele around the state through non-formal education programs. From the earliest days of the RI College of Agriculture and Mechanical Arts, faculty and staff scientists were holding informal workshops for farmers in the Grange Halls and other venues around the state. By 1904, these workshops were so popular that the college president, Dr. Kenyon L. Butterfield organized the institution into three departments --- Experiment Station, Instruction and Extension --- thereby establishing a professional extension service in the state to relieve pressure on AES researchers and to better serve the college’s extramural clientele. Unknowingly, Butterfield’s administrative innovation is likely to have influenced the establishment of Cooperative Extension Service nationwide because ten years later in 1914, the Smith-Lever Act provided federal funding for the establishment of Cooperative Extension programs at all Land Grant institutions. For me, a feeling of intense pride is generated by the fact the predecessor of URI was the prototype for institutions of higher education contributing to genuine knowledge-based economic development throughout the entire country.
As the RI College of Agriculture and Mechanical Arts grew to become Rhode Island State College and later, the University of Rhode Island, the Land Grant Programs served well through the Great Depression and the World War II years, but programs changed with the changing needs of Rhode Islanders. Conservation of natural resources, natural resource-based industry development, and focus on fisheries and other coastal and marine issues have become important to Rhode Islanders.
In the early-1960s the Land Grant College model was recognized by three Rhode Islanders as the best academic partnership model for stimulating economic development in the newest frontier, the ocean. With the cooperation of Dean John Knauss of URI’s Graduate School of Oceanography and Dr. Lewis Alexander of URI’s old Department of Geography, Senator Claiborne Pell in 1966 introduced the Sea Grant Act, establishing Sea Grant Colleges throughout the nation. In 1971, URI became one of the first four Sea Grant Institutions, and URI’s Sea Grant College Program to this day remains as one of the nation’s largest and most successful programs. Rhode Island Sea Grant researchers and outreach specialists have contributed mightily to the rapid development of our fishing and marine trades industries in the 1970s and the ‘business’ of conserving coastal and marine resources in the 1980s and 1990s.
Today, URI’s Land Grant and Sea Grant Programs are well poised to provide the academic linkages necessary for developing research and knowledge-based economic development opportunities for Rhode Islanders. Exciting new initiatives include application of the latest electronic tools to land and coastal management problems, research information for better management of stressed fishery resources, development of environmentally friendly forms of aquaculture, research information for management of vector-borne diseases such as Lyme Disease and West Nile Virus, research information for better management and efficient use of our freshwater resources, and the development of biotechnology industries in our state.
To boost support for these historically important academic programs contributing to our economic well being and quality of life, Rep. Eileen Naughton of Warwick has introduced the Land Grant-Sea Grant Bill (H-6191), with the co-sponsorship of Reps. Benson, Ginaitt, Crowley, and Aubin that will provide dedicated state matching funds to maximize the effectiveness of Land Grant and Sea Grant programs in our state and grow our ability to seek even greater federal funding. This effort to provide state budget line item dedicated matching funds for these long-standing federal programs are a step of major significance for our state. As we’ve done historically, we’re here to build Rhode Island’s economy and a prosperous 21st century for ordinary Rhode Islanders.
Michael A. Rice, an occasional contributor, is a professor and chairman of the Department of Fisheries, Animal and Veterinary Science at the University of Rhode Island.