Columbia Area Centers and Farms

A: Horticulture and Agroforestry Research Center

B: Dairy Farm

C: Schnabel Arboretum

D: Hinkson Bottoms

E: South Farm

F: Bradford Research and Extension Center

G: McCredie Farm

H: Baskett Wildlife Center

A common challenge among most land-grant universities is dealing with land development encroaching on what have been university farms and ranches. Whether in Urbana-Champaign, Lincoln, Fargo, or Auburn, one can’t help but notice the interface between corn and classroom buildings. Most of these campus communities have grown, and the ability of the agricultural college to cope with this change varies. We in CAFNR have our own legacies across campus and around Columbia that we are readying for the future.

On campus, we have two National Historic Landmarks important in the history of the nation’s agricultural science. Crop rotation experiments began on Sanborn Field in 1888, and the first field studies comparing alternative cropping practices on soil erosion began in 1917 near where the hospital is today. Data from these plots have literally changed the American landscape, with the Universal Soil Loss Equation largely drawn from data collected here.

We are working closely with Randy Miles in the Soil, Environmental, and Atmospheric Sciences department, who is the curator of these sites, to bring their history alive in the 21st century. Among all the construction plans for the southeast part of campus, look for the new fence, plaza, and interpretative signage highlighting Sanborn Field next fall.

Though not contiguous with campus, CAFNR and its Missouri Agricultural Experiment Station also have numerous research and educational farms in and around Columbia. In fact within this geography alone, we manage 5,714 acres of our total holdings of more than 14,500 acres across the state. With recent approval by the Columbia city council of the Phillips tract development, perhaps none of these sites is more in the cross-hairs of development than South Farm.

South Farm lies along the east side of US Highway 63 on the south side of Columbia, and directly east of the Phillips tract. A rolling landscape of more than 1,400 acres, South Farm will share the proposed US 63 diamond interchange with our new neighbors to the west. While not directly involved in any of the development discussions to date, we have been closely watching MoDOT’s interchange plans and the city’s process of weighing the pros/cons of what will be the largest single development in the city’s history.

After careful deliberations with faculty, campus administrators, the city, and local economic development groups, we have decided the best possible outcome for South Farm would be for CAFNR to stay and develop a long-term plan of mixed use that would support our missions of research, teaching, extension and economic development.

Retaining a mostly agricultural landscape upstream from the Phillips tract could help the sensitive Gans creek; it could maintain the ready access to crops, animals, fields, and pastures for our students and faculty; it could grow into an ever more valuable green space for beauty and marketing of MU and CAFNR; and lastly – with planning – it could become a technology park where our discoveries could leap into commercialization while providing an income stream to keep the CAFNR wellspring of innovation flowing.

This long-term, mixed-use plan won’t succeed without faculty participation and hired expertise. We have contracted with Sasaki Associates from Boston, Mass. Landscape architects from Sasaki were largely responsible for the planning that went into MU’s campus becoming revitalized over the past twenty years. Sasaki has also dealt with more than a dozen land-grant colleges of agriculture and their own growing pains in association with development pressure among their experimental farms.

Please mark your calendar for Wednesday, April 7. Sasaki will be hosting three sessions, each one and a half hours beginning at 10 a.m., 1 p.m. and 2:30 p.m. in the Campus Facilities Building for CAFNR faculty and staff as we begin the planning process. Each session will be identical and repeated in an attempt to have one at a convenient time for as many of you as possible.

Help us prepare CAFNR for the future. Hope to see you at one of the sessions on April 7!

Regards, John