Havre ag research center celebrates 100 years

In 1912, when Montana agriculture was still in its infancy, the state Legislature approved the purchase of the abandoned military headquarters at the old Fort Assiniboine to be converted into an agriculture experiment station.

It took three more years for the U.S. Congress to approve the purchase and several more months for the bill to reach the president's desk, but on Nov. 15, 1915, President Woodrow Wilson signed into law the creation of the Montana Northern Agriculture Research Center.

On Wednesday, ranchers, farmers, area business leaders, along with research center alumni gathered on the grounds of the center a few miles southwest of Havre to celebrate a century of innovation.

The celebration was also an opportunity for research center staff to honor former superintendent Gregg Carlson, who led the NARC facility between 2003 and 2010.

Carlson, who also served as an associate professor of agronomy at Montana State University, was a fixture within Montana agricultural for 42 years. He is credited with encouraging the widespread adoption of no-till farming in northern Montana, which significantly reduced the amount of soil erosion and improved water quality and the productivity of farmers' fields. Carlson also worked with the first GPS system in Montana on harvest, seeding and fertilizer placement.

The research center's agricultural science center office and lab building was rededicated in Carlson's honor at Wednesday's celebration

"We're celebrating family, we're celebrating community and we're celebrating a legacy of 100 years," said Charles Boyer, dean of Montana State University's College of Agriculture, and the keynote speaker at Wednesday's centennial celebration. "All of those are intimately intertwined with the people who are here today."

The Ag Research Center's legacy extends well beyond the fields and pastures of Montana's Hi-Line to encompass agriculture practices now commonly used across the country and around the world. According to Don Anderson, the retired superintendent of NARC who held that office for 27 years between 1975 and 2002, the station's original function was to provide support to the thousands of farmers who flooded into the area following passage of the Enlarged Homestead Act in 1909.

"The people who were coming in, some of them had very limited knowledge of farming," Anderson said. "They began breaking up the native prairie soil and planting crops, not really knowing how to handle them."

The research center's earliest work began with basic research on which crops fared best in what would come to be known as Montana's "Golden Triangle" for its wheat production. Refinements in dryland crop rotation, and best practices for preserving soil moisture in semi-arid northcentral Montana were some of the earliest successes.

"The important question here is the conservation of moisture," wrote the experiment station's first superintendent, George Morgan, in letter from 1919.

In the dust bowl years of the 1930s, soil erosion threatened to wipe out 20 years of agricultural development in northcentral Montana. Researchers and ag extension officials at NARC instituted a widespread outreach program to mitigate the damage.

"They found out that if farmers planted in narrow strips you could control some of the erosion," Anderson explained. "They were also doing things like planting grass and tree barriers to try and reduce some of the erosion. The experiment station was constantly trying to update and find new methods."

One of NARC's greatest legacies came in 1948, when it became the first facility in the country to begin experimenting with a "chemical fallow" system of crop production. Prior to the 1980s, common farming practice was to deep-till the soil to eliminate weeds and prepare for the next planting. Those methods had the disadvantage of releasing large amounts of soil moisture, exacerbating erosion and gradually degrading soil health.

The chemical fallow system sought to limit disruptions to the soil by using herbicides instead of tilling, and then planting the next crop cycle directly into the stubble. It was the predecessor or today's "no-till" farming, which has become the industry standard.

Research conducted at NARC was also critical to the livestock industry. Records kept on the facility's cow herd provided convincing evidence that beef performance could be significantly improved through breeding programs focusing on birth weights, weaning weights and yearling weights.

"Various purebred livestock organizations picked up on this and eventually you had national organizations starting to use methods developed at the Norther Ag Research Center," Anderson said.

At Wednesday's centennial celebration, there was as much focus on agriculture's future as there was on the center's storied past. Station tours and discussions repeated throughout the day, focusing on a diverse range of topics including the beneficial use of drones in crop production, protein and mineral supplementation for livestock, evaluations on new varieties of winter and spring wheat, and improving precise "micro-distribution" of water and nutrients.