(Tom Jirik wrote columns in several newspapers in Iowa from the late 1980’s to the mid 1990’s.  This column originally appeared in the The Boone Today) 

I was hoping that my new job at Iowa State University would be like this.

Iowa’s land grant university last week announced a first-in -the nation planting of genetically altered plants.  If experiments were successful, farmers may one day be able to abandon pesticides in favor of biological insect control.

That’s kind of announcement you’d expect from a university like Iowa State.  Even up at North Dakota State University, Iowa State was famous for its agricultural research.  Many of the textbooks and materials we used in our agricultural classes were developed at Iowa State.  Any study of recent agricultural history is closely intertwined with the history of the ag college at Ames.

That’s not always been the case, America’s land grant colleges, with Iowa Sate at the forefront, fell victim in the past decade to huge crop surpluses and low farm prices.  Folks started questioning the value of ag research.  The foundations laid by the Morrill and Hatch Acts in the late 1800’s, establishing land grant colleges and experiment stations, seemed to be crumbling.

Meanwhile, scientists, with enough vision and common sense to know better, continued their work and delved into new areas.  Who, 20 years ago, would have thought transferring genetic material from a potato plant to tobacco plants or corn or soybean plants would be possible.  Even now, I doubt if we realize all the possibilities of such an advance.

Land grant universalities like ISU and their experiment stations again gaining international acclaim for their discoveries. This time it’s not for production advances, but for better methods of resource management and environmental protection-solutions for the problems of our time.

Biotech and high tech have replaced higher yields as the bywords of a new era I agricultural research. 

If, through the miracles of biotechnology, we can find biological controls for pests and disease in our crops, many of our environmental problems will be solved.  It’s important that researchers like Bob Thornburg continue to receive state and federal monies for their work.

At the same time, Iowa State has the unique opportunity to bring salvation to a troubled Iowa economy while finding solutions to global problems.

Already, with Midland bioproducts and its pampered goats, Boone is seeing the economic benefits of biotechnology.

During the past two weeks, i’ve been doing some research of my own.  As part of my new job, i’ve been assigned to review the past 100 years of advances made by the Iowa Agriculture and home Economics Experiment Station at Iowa State University.  For many ag students across the country, Iowa State University is synomous with greatness.  I’m beginning to understand why.

Names like C.F. Curtiss and Henry A. Wallace suddenly gain much more significance.  I’ve paged through 100-year-old experiment station bulletins and stacks of other yellowed publications.   Under extreme conditions, early researchers in Agriculture Hall and Morrill Hall at the Iowa Agriculture College laid the groundwork for Bob Thornburg and his colleagues.

Some of their research seems simple and out-dated now, but in other passages the writing leaps off the page in excitement as those early scientists wrote with enthusiasm of their findings.

I occasionally sit in my office in Morrill Hall and wonder if a young Wallace or Curtiss paced the floor in this very office years a go, pondering the pressing problems of Iowa’s farmers.  The diligence and brilliance of those scientists found solutions and brought prosperity to the farmers of the corn belt and beyond.

It’s a tradition that had not died at Iowa State University.  Thornburg has proved that.  Thornburg and the others who now pace the offices and grounds of Iowa State University will follow in the footsteps of Curtiss and Wallace and other far-sighted researchers.

Just as the researchers of the past found solutions for their time, today’s researchers will find solutions to the present problems.