The Role of the University of California

The University of California is a formidable force in the agricultural environment of California. The University excels in its ability to provide instructional, research, and extension services to the farming populations and agricultural industries of the State, the nation, and the world. There is little doubt of what the University could accomplish if some of its resources and expertise were directed to the plight of California's rural communities and farm working population.

The University is a land grant institution initially created and nurtured by the Morrill, Hatch, and Smith-lever Acts designed to direct assistance to the small family farm, the farm laborer, and rural communities. There has been substantial debate about the nation's land grant colleges and universities and their roles in the life of rural America, and whether the vast system of education, research, and extension is working for or against the cause of livable rural communities. Congressional inquiries and legal action have directed a reassessment of the mission and roles of the land grant institutions the University of California prominently among them.

While the University of California has been the source of some pioneering research in issues largely neglected by the land grant system, much of this research was born out of individual concerns and independent funding sources rather than as a result of institutional priorities. It is clearly, however, an appropriate moment for the University to harness its abundant resources in the areas of rural/agricultural development and devote them to the study and solution of issues affecting sectors of the State's agricultural society that have thus far remained largely neglected. The University is well-equipped, structurally and professionally, to go among the people of rural California to help them identify and solve their farm, home, and community problems. Rural Latinos are, of course, included in this objective since they account for the vast majority of the State's large and growing agricultural labor force and for a considerable proportion of the inhabitants of rural communities. Concerted action on the part of the University to engage research in this direction would, furthermore, serve to advance the purposes and intentions of Senate Concurrent Resolution 43.

The quality and extent of the University's teaching, research and extension resources, facilities and services developed specifically for the purposes of transmitting, advancing and disseminating knowledge and technology relative to agricultural sciences are well known to most and do not require a detailed description here. It is sufficient to indicate that three of the nine campuses of the system (Berkeley, Davis, and Riverside) are recognized world-wide as leaders in the field; that their academic departments and faculty -- reflecting the complete scope of disciplines and specialties, including some of very recent formation or in the process of being developed -- are credited for the advanced training of thousands of agricultural professionals throughout the world; that its research centers and experiment stations are not one involved in what is recognized to be the cutting edge of many scientific developments but are also engaged in basic applied research, seeking and finding practical solutions to problems which affect farming communities at home and abroad; and that its statewide Cooperative Extension Programs linking the University to the farming community are an example to be emulated and/or envied by others.