By Ashley M. Stokes
For two and a half centuries, the United States has been founded upon our capacity to feed communities, both at home and throughout the world. Through the forethought of federal legislators and Abraham Lincoln, we now have a complex and interconnected cooperative system for growing, cultivating, harvesting, processing and delivering the food we all rely on.
That system is nothing short of a daily miracle, delivering, despite the increasing and unpredictable challenges that farmers and the agricultural industry face, healthy and abundant food to retailers and communities across the country and worldwide.
Underpinning this miracle is a partnership among farmers, state and federal government, and public research universities, like the University of California, Davis, where I serve as dean of the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.
A series of acts established by the federal government provided the foundation of the United States agricultural powerhouse we see today. In 1862, the Morrill Land Grant Act was established and signed by Abraham Lincoln after the Civil War to establish higher education institutions to provide education for the broader population and to promote education in agriculture and the mechanical arts.
Source : ucdavis.edu