Malamalama: A History of the University of Hawaii

8. THE COLLEGE OF TROPICAL AGRICULTURE AND HUMAN RESOURCES

163 he College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources (ctahr) has origins predating those of the University. It was shaped by federal legislation that profoundly affected agricultural research and the spread of higher education throughout the United States. The Hatch Act of 1887 authorized establishing agricultural experiment stations across the nation. At the turn of the century, the Department of Agriculture asked Dr. W. C. Stubbs, director of the Louisiana station, to determine the need for one in the new Territory of Hawaii. He visited the Islands and reported to Congress in 1901. Recognizing that the Hawaiian Sugar Planters’ Association (hspa) already had a research station serving its dominant industry, he recommended that a new experiment station in Hawaii concentrate on other production, such as fruits and vegetables, rice, coffee, livestock, and dairying. Consequently, the Hawaii Agricultural Experiment Station (haes) was established in 1901 as an agency of the Department of Agriculture, independent of local institutions . It remained so, though with increasing cooperation with the scientists of Hawaii’s new College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts, until 1938, when it became the agricultural research arm of UH. The Cooperative Extension Service (ces), established by the federal Smith-Lever Act of 1914 to provide practical demonstration of better cultivation methods and otherwise to advance the welfare of farm families, was from the beginning adminisT 8 THE COLLEGE OF TROPICAL AGRICULTURE AND HUMAN RESOURCES Wallace C. Mitchell 164 Manoa Colleges and Programs tered within Hawaii’s new college, although Hawaii received no funds under the act until 1928. The teaching function of ctahr also derives from federal law, the Morrill Acts of 1862 and 1890. As a territory Hawaii was ineligible for the land grants made to states under the Civil War statute, but it could receive federal appropriations for a college “to teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts,” under the Second Morrill Act. By establishing its college in 1907, Hawaii joined the national land-grant college network. Over the decades, the UH agricultural program repeatedly modified its structure, seeking best to organize its functions of teaching, research, and demonstration. When the new College opened in 1908, it offered instruction in agriculture. When it became the University of Hawai‘i in 1920, agricultural courses were placed in the new College of Applied Science, where they remained until a Graduate School of Tropical Agriculture was created in 1931. In 1947 the extension service and experiment station, along with the formal instructional program, were all joined into a College of Agriculture. Further integration was sought in 1978 by merging research and extension functions into one institute within the newly renamed College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources. Integration has been the mode of development, but each of the College’s three functions has its own history in the Islands. They merit separate telling. RESEARCH While the Hawaii Agricultural Experiment Station was not completely incorporated into the College of Agriculture until 1938, the college had long worked with scientists of the federal agency on problems of diversified agriculture. The station and the college had their start in a period when there was being sought for Hawaii, and particularly for native Hawaiians, some means of opening up an independent life on the land. The early territorial government had tried to follow the homesteading experience of the continental United States, with little success. Then the federal Hawaiian Homes Commission Act of 1920 set aside approximately two hundred thousand acres of land for settlement by persons of 50 percent or more Hawaiian ancestry, and some of that land was suitable for cultivation—given enough water. But, for those homesteaders and other cultivators who wished to supply the market, what could be grown advantageously and how? The emerging national network of agricultural research and demonstration facilities based at continental land-grant colleges provided few relevant answers for tropical agriculture. Farms were established to demonstrate new crops and new cultivation methods for Hawaii. The haes demonstration farms, when incorporated into the College of Agriculture , made it a territorywide enterprise. Over the first half of the century, when the The College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources 165 rest of the University was essentially limited to its Manoa campus and an extension at Hilo, the College of Agriculture was operating on all major islands of Hawaii. An inevitable consequence was the involvement of the college in the hopes and politics of...