A Premier Land Grant Instution

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History:

The Morrill Act, signed into law in 1862 by President Abraham Lincoln established the Land Grant university system in the United States.  This legislation granted public lands to each state for the express purpose of using the proceeds from the sale of such land to establish a perpetual endowment fund to support colleges of agriculture and mechanical arts in each state.  In 1868, the Illinois Industrial University (later to be called the University of Illinois) which included agriculture was established with an emphasis on teaching. The College of Agriculture was a founding college of the university.

The Illinois Agricultural Experiment Station was founded in 1888, following passage of the Hatch Act that authorized an agricultural experiment station in each state to “promote scientific investigation and experimentation respecting the principles and application of agricultural science”.  Innovative University of Illinois faculty had launched pioneering field experiments at least 12 years before the Hatch Act with the establishment of a study to evaluate the long-time effects of different cropping systems with and without soil treatments on prairie soils.  These field experiments, conducted on plots of land now named for Professor Morrow, are the oldest continuous experimental plots in the United States and still yield valuable information.

The third branch of Land Grant Institutions, Extension, was established with the passage of the Smith-Lever Act in 1914.  The intent of this act was to transfer results of University research to farmers and homemakers.  The Department of Crop Sciences at the University of Illinois has subscribed to excellence in all three phases of the land grant mission, namely teaching, research, and extension (outreach).
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