Origins of the University of Minnesota Extension Service

The Agricultural Extension Service of the United States (AES) began as an educational component of land-grant universities. In Minnesota as in other states, the federally funded and organized services of AES provide practical agricultural training to people outside of a university setting.

Education is a core principle of AES. In order to understand the nature of extension work and its origins in Minnesota, it is important to look at efforts made to improve farming education, and methods, in the 1850s.

After the territory of Minnesota was established in 1849, Euro-American immigrants started farms inside its borders. Subsistence agriculture and food preservation techniques were the topics of the day. The members of this agrarian community relied on traditional, informal education provided by parents to their children. As a result, there were no written records of farming instruction specific to Minnesota.

Since young communities depended on reliable food supplies to survive, they began to create agricultural societies to study farming techniques, crop production methods, and livestock. Members then passed on their knowledge to friends and neighbors. These early groups were modeled after societies in New England, such as the Massachusetts Society for Promoting Agriculture.

Oliver H. Kelley emerged as a leader for farmers across Minnesota Territory in the mid-1850s. He was a farmer himself, with a homestead in Elk River. In 1852, Kelley’s discussions with his peers led to the creation of the Benton County Agricultural Society, the first official agricultural society in the state. More societies followed in Ramsey County in 1852, in Hennepin County in 1853, and in others over time. The Minnesota Territorial Agricultural Society (MTAS) formed in 1854 to represent each of the new local groups' interests. While county fairs had been held in Minnesota Territory in earlier years, the MTAS took over planning and execution of the annual fair, which offered education about crops, animal husbandry, and dairying.

In 1855, a member of MTAS named Henry H. Sibley called for a federal regulatory body to oversee all of U.S. agriculture. Sibley was a representative of Minnesota Territory at the time, and had also advocated for the establishment of a local university to teach farming techniques. Afterward, more members of MTAS spoke out about the creation of an agricultural college to connect farming knowledge with the sciences and more formal instruction.

At the same time in 1855, Justin Morrill was elected into the U.S. House of Representatives and began to share his ideas about farming education. In 1857, he introduced a land-grant bill to Congress that would allow all states to receive federal grants for the purpose of establishing an institution to provide formal training in agricultural techniques. President Abraham Lincoln signed the bill, known as the Morrill Act, in 1862.

The Morrill Act provided money and land to states for the establishment of at least one college that offered classes in agriculture, mechanics, and military strategy. Morrill’s bill in its initial form had not included military instruction; the start of the Civil War undoubtedly inspired the 1861 amendment that added it.

Two subsequent congressional bills strengthened the Morrill Act in the same year it was signed into law. The first created the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which further stimulated agriculture through federal support. The second, which created the Homestead Act, encouraged farmers to immigrate to western states and territories.

In Minnesota, an agricultural college developed gradually. The University of Minnesota had opened its doors in 1851 as a preparatory school without agricultural courses. Due to money problems and a lack of enrollment, however, it closed its doors during the Civil War. State representative and university regent John S. Pillsbury, meanwhile, made sure that the school became the state’s official land-grant university under the Morrill Act and received the public funds tied to it. In part because of Pillsbury’s help, the school reopened in 1867 with plans to add an agricultural college and buy land for hands-on farming instruction. Unable to attract enough students for a farming course, the College of Agriculture at the University of Minnesota did not begin its service until 1888.

Before the opening of the college, Minnesotans devised other ways to spread knowledge. Farmers’ institutes had been at the forefront of agricultural education in eastern states since 1853. The institutes organized public meetings and lectures for farmers that were often promoted by state agricultural societies. In Minnesota, farmers’ institutes and press releases spread farming instruction. Educational publications such as the Minnesota Monthly, the Prairie Farmer, the Minnesota Farmer and Gardener, and the State Atlas appeared in the 1870s and 1880s.

In 1867, Oliver Kelley founded and led an organization called the Patrons of Husbandry, also known as the Grange. Its Minnesota branch, founded two years later, supported and educated farmers across the state. The Grange offered opportunities for both men and women to discuss agricultural topics.

In 1887, Congress passed the Hatch Act, which provided funds for states to create farming experiment stations at colleges funded exclusively by land grants. It aimed to support research conducted on university farms that would test and improve production. The act gave the College of Agriculture at the University of Minnesota the momentum it needed to attract students interested in applying science to farming. Both students and professors of agriculture worked at the experiment station, an alliance that boosted both the practicality of instruction and faculty respect for farmers.

In the years leading to the turn of the twentieth century, farming instruction in Minnesota and across the U.S. was dominated by expanding agricultural colleges. As farmers’ institute instructors had done before them, educators at these colleges provided demonstrations, hands-on training, short courses, and other practical solutions. It was common for groups of educators to visit rural areas to meet farmers. They called their units “movable schools” or “extension schools.”

At the UMCA (University of Minnesota College of Agriculture) in 1910, staff organized an Agricultural Extension Division—a unit that oversaw all of the university’s extension efforts. Over time, the UMCA’s extension mission evolved to focus on providing short, in-field courses and demonstrations.

U.S. Department of Agriculture and land-grant colleges began to plan a system to better control extension work across the U.S. in the early 1910s. The Smith-Lever Act, signed into law in 1914, organized AES services nationwide. The new law fostered cooperation between land-grant universities and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, whose federal funds were essential to AES administration, execution, and success.