Genesis (the beginning): 1877-1907
The initiatives for the founding of North Carolina State University (originally named the North Carolina State College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts) and the North Carolina Agricultural Experiment Station which came from members of the Watauga Club and other farm and political leaders of the state is well acknowledged. In addition, a group of advocates in educational and scientific leadership positions also played a significant part, and their role is often not fully recognized. This group was heavily involved in initiation and implementation of agricultural programs at NC State and especially in establishment of the roots of the soils programs here - and for that they deserve special recognition and thanks. This group includes Dr. Kemp Battle, President of the University of North Carolina in the 1870's; Dr. Washington Caruthers Kerr, State Geologist for North Carolina and a faculty member of UNC in the 1870's; Dr. Albert Ledoux, first agricultural chemist and who may be considered the first director of what was to become the NC Agricultural Experiment Station at NCSU; Dr. Charles William Dabney, Jr., the second Director of the Experiment Station and also an agricultural chemist and Dr. Milton Whitney, first Superintendent of the First Research farm. ( 1 ) ( 2 ) ( 3 ) ( 4 )
The activities of these men provided the roots of the soil science program, a role not fully brought out in histories of the University, the School of Agriculture and Life Sciences and the Agricultural Experiment Station. President Battle became interested in the concept of a State Agricultural Experiment Station using the model of the one established in Connecticut in the early 1870's by Dr. W. 0. Atwater. Dr. Atwater's objective for founding the pioneer Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station was application of scientific knowledge in agriculture - a novel idea at that time - to support and supervise the newly emerging chemical fertilizer industry in Connecticut and to determine the nutrient needs of the soils on which the fertilized crops were to be grown. Such activities were to follow up and exploit the recently completed research by chemists in Germany (especially that of Justus von Liebig), and England (especially Gilbert and Lawes), who had discovered that the growing of crops is "vastly aided by application of plant food to soils in form of chemical fertilizers" - a daring new idea at the time of its discovery in the 1840's. A Scottish professor of chemistry, James F. W. Johnston, who proposed that farmers learn these new experimental techniques from scientists and subsidize laboratory research on these new "special manures" (commercial fertilizers), also contributed to the concept of an agricultural experiment station. ( 5 ) Because of the strong interests in fertilizers and soils, North Carolina was one of the first seven states to establish a State Agricultural Experiment Station. ( 5 ) In his position as State Geologist located on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, W. C. Kerr was besieged with requests to analyze fertilizer materials as to their efficacy and quality and to make recommendations as to their use. He felt, much to his credit, that this kind of activity needed to be associated with an agricultural rather than a geological setting and therefore was one of the members of a team that led the efforts to establish the NC Department of Agriculture and what was to become the NC Agricultural Experiment Station. This fertilizer analysis program started on the campus at Chapel Hill where there were laboratory facilities, but Battle and Kerr were instrumental in moving this laboratory to Raleigh after the Experiment Station was successfully under way. The thinking in Connecticut and of the leaders in North Carolina, especially President Battle, Kerr and Dabney, was that after the initial high priority work had been done and a program of control of quality of fertilizers and of recommending amounts to use was established, the researchers could then go on to other agricultural research needs in an expanded program. Thus these primordial programs of fertilizer and soil activities were not only the forerunners of the present soil science program but also could be considered the roots and the cause for establishment of the NC Agricultural Experiment Station (NCAES) now the North Carolina Agricultural Research Service (NCARS).
Genesis of what may be identified as soil science-related activity within what is now NCSU and the NCARS is attributable to three actions:
- Establishment of an Agricultural Experiment Station by an Act of the General Assembly in 1877 which stipulated that the Board of Trustees "shall employ an analyst skilled in agricultural chemistry" whose duties were to include analysis of fertilizers and to conduct experiments on the nutrition and growth of plants with a view of determining which fertilizers were best suited to the various crops in the state.
- Appointment of Dr. Albert Ledoux as the first agricultural chemist in 1877 and nominally the first Director of the NCAES (though employed by the State Board of Agriculture).
- Purchase of a 10 acre tract in what is now West Raleigh in 1885 for field experimentation with fertilizers and crops, which was augmented by a gift of 25 acres from the State Agricultural Society, the group that then sponsored and conducted the State Fair.
Ledoux, an excellent chemist, started a program of analysis of fertilizers as to quality (what came to be called fertilizer control) and their effectiveness in promoting crop growth. However, he resigned in 1880 after only three years in this position.
Dr. Charles William Dabney Jr. was appointed to replace Ledoux in 1880 and thus became the second director of the Agricultural Experiment Station. ( 4 ) Dabney continued and enlarged the work on efficacy of fertilizer materials and of the plant food requirements for crop growth on various soils, although strongly interested in plant nutrients, plant root functions and soil conservation.
Plant food requirements was the first priority item, as indicated in Dabney's Agricultural Experiment Station Report for 1881, which included the statement that "the subject which most interests our people is that of fertilizing the soil." Dabney studied and brought general attention to the "relative exhaustion of plant nutrients by cotton, wheat and tobacco." He acquired this information by analysis of nutrient content of these plants and relating these data to the fertilizer requirements of the plants - a pioneering approach. He and his associates also reported on "how plants obtained ammonia", value of deep plowing of soils and the relative costs of fertilizer materials. He urged the establishment of an experimental farm and was the prime mover in obtaining such a tract in 1885.
In 1886, Dabney appointed Milton Whitney as the first superintendent of the research farm in West Raleigh. On this tract Whitney initiated research on physical properties of soils in relation to growth of plants, which was among the first, if not the first, such research in the USA. Also in 1886, Whitney began the first pot culture work in the USA for measuring the plant food requirements of crops, using 1-gallon candy jars as pots. About the same time, he investigated the amount of evapotranspiration of cotton and the effects of soil temperature and moisture on plant growth, which have been called "the first really important investigations of this subject in the USA." ( 4 ) He was to go on a few years later to wider responsibilities as Chief of the newly established Bureau of Soils in the USDA. In this position he became world-renowned for establishment of the first soil survey program in the USA and the first systematic classification of US soils. He also became widely known for his highly controversial view that soil texture (content of clay, silt and sand) was the chief factor in soil productivity and not the soil's nutrient status or fertility, which put him in sharp difference with the soil chemists and soil fertility specialists of that day. He was also renowned for his ever present cigar and his allegations that he could determine the kind of soil in which a tobacco was grown by the aroma of the smoke from these cigars.( 6 ) Oral history indicates that not all of his work associates shared this cigar connoisseur's enthusiasm.
The first soil fertility trials away from the Research Farm were conducted on the farms of six cooperating farmers in Orange and Chatham counties in 1886, due to the vision and efforts of Dabney. The first soil fertility research plots at outlying locations but controlled by the Station began on leased fields in Edgecombe and Robeson counties in 1899. These leased fields "primed the pump" for establishment of outlying research stations (then called test farms) which began shortly thereafter. Soil fertility plots, fertilizer trials and soil management trials and demonstrations were the soil science component of these early outlying research stations.
Thus by the turn of the century, the foundations were laid for a program in soil fertility and soil management and related soil science research. Because of this foundation C. B. Williams was able to comment in 1927 "there is probably no state that has a better knowledge of its soil and plant food deficiencies." ( 7 )
The pioneering soil survey program was also prominent in the early days of soil science activities at NCSU. The soil survey program in North Carolina began in 1900, a cooperative effort between NC State and the State Board of Agriculture (precursor of the State Department of Agriculture). ( 8 )
North Carolina became one of the first six states to begin a program of systematic classification and mapping of soils, with accompanying interpretations of use potentials. The first soil survey in North Carolina was the "Raleigh to New Bern Area" started in 1900. The purpose of the survey was to serve as a basis for systematic investigation of the fertilizer requirements of different crops (especially tobacco). Scale of mapping for this pioneer survey was one inch per mile compared with scales of 4 inches per mile and larger used today. Thirteen types of soils were recognized, and soil type names were established for soils prominent and extensive today but much more narrowly defined - such as Cecil and Norfolk. The area was selected because it paralleled railroad rights-of-way along which some geologic mapping had been done (the early soil surveys had a very strong geologic bias and basis) and because this was an important tobacco producing area.
A second soil survey was begun in the Statesville area in the Piedmont in 1901. The report accompanying the soil maps of this area stated that farming practices had "caused washing and small gullies .... with many fields having gullies with a depth of greater than 40 feet." ( 8 ) This is one of the first published descriptions of concerns about soil erosion, which subsequently became a strong national concern and led to the establishment of the USDA Soil Conservation Service. Some recommendations for control of this erosion were made in the Statesville area soil survey report: - "gullied fields in a few years could be entirely reclaimed by judicious use of ditches and terraces and the filling in of the larger gullies by means of pine boughs and logs" - a forerunner of more technical and advanced erosion control recommendations to come later.
Early Soil Science Teaching Activities
The first formal recognition of soil science teaching at North Carolina State appears to be the 1890 Catalog, which shows that in the junior year agriculture majors were to receive instruction in agricultural chemistry, covering "atmosphere as plant feeder, the plant and the soil - its composition and origin, physical and chemical properties and its agency as reservoir plant feeder."( 9 )
By 1895-96, the catalog showed that in their senior year students also were to receive lecture topics in "care and use of manures, improvement of exhausted soils by rotation of crops and by growing renovation crops." ( 9 )
For the 1897-98 academic year, a series of formal courses was listed for the first time, including a course in soil physics for seniors (mostly involving farm drainage and water handling practice). ( 9 )
In the 1900-01 catalog Agricultural Experiment Station Department and research personnel affiliated with the Experiment Station were listed for the first time ( 9 ) a beginning of the coordination of research-teaching-extension which has made the Land Grant College concept so effective.
Early Extension Activities for Transfer of Soilsand Fertilizer Information
It is interesting to note that by 1888 demonstrations and tests of fertilizer use on various soils were conducted on 21 outlying farms in cooperation with these farmers. Demonstrations and on-farm tests included comparisons of rock phosphate, cottonseed meal and kainite (a potassium-bearing mineral) versus no fertilizer or stable manure only. Such extension activities continued in a growing but somewhat limited way until the passage of the Smith-Lever Act in 1914 which provided Federal funds for extension work and established a Cooperative Extension Service in each state.
This page last modified 1/15/03.