From the Fair to the Laboratory: The Institutionalization of Agricultural Science and Education in Maine

Up until the mid-nineteenth century, agricultural science and education in Maine were primarily local affairs. Meeting in farm clubs and attending agricultural fairs, the Maine farmer performed most research by trial and error and by meeting on common ground with other farmers to discuss what worked and what did not. By the mid-nineteenth century, however, the farm clubs and county fairs waned and succumbed to the growing political influence of the Grange, which supported burgeoning agricultural scientific and educational institutions, such as the College of Agriculture and the Experiment Station. Through the auspices of the Grange, such institutions took the reins of agricultural science and education away from the farmer, and the field of agricultural science and education shifted from a “bottom-up” system to a “top-down” system of knowledge dissemination. Tom Reznick graduated from Colby College in 2007 with a B.A. in Science, Technology, and Society. In the fall of 2008, he will be pursuing doctoral studies in the history of science and medicine at Yale University. He currently lives in Brighton, Massachusetts, where he works for an environmental non-profit organization