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Fielding research for 50 years
Milan No-Till Field Day site has been pioneering new methods of farming for half a century
This display at the 2012 No-Till Field Day commemorates the 50th year of the event’s home, the University of Tennessee AgResearch and Education Center at Milan.
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When the University of Tennessee opened the “Milan Field Station” 50 years ago, it marked the beginning of an agricultural research facility that would pioneer a new method of farming and change the way crops are grown worldwide.
“It may not have been realized at the time, but UT made history when they opened this facility in 1962,” says Dr. Blake Brown, the site’s current director. “This center was a catalyst for the no-till farming movement, and over the past 50 years, there have been a lot of agricultural advancements that have come from the work done at this center.”
The original goal of the Milan Field Station was to study crop production on full-sized fields with machinery comparable to what area farmers used. However, the late Thomas McCutchen, the station’s first superintendent, convinced some researchers to orient their investigations in the direction of a new concept: conservation tillage. McCutchen hoped to find the most cost-effective way to control the growing problem of erosion and maintain soil productivity, and by the 1970s, research at Milan concentrated on no-till technology.
“He and his colleagues persevered and worked through the difficulties, and they finally came up with this system that could be used by most farmers to control soil erosion,” says Brown. “Has that been successful? Absolutely.”
The first Milan No-Till Field Day in 1981 was McCutchen’s brainchild, designed to spread the word about these practices that were virtually unknown at the time. Largely as a result of the field day’s continued popularity, a majority of producers now use no-till methods.
While no-till remains the center’s claim to fame, there’s much more that goes on at the 675-acre station, which in 2005 was renamed the AgResearch and Education Center at Milan. More than 100 research projects on all aspects of corn, cotton, soybeans, grain sorghum, wheat, and cover crop production are currently under way in addition to specialty projects such as growing switchgrass for biofuel and soil conservation studies.
“Our goal is sustainable, profitable agriculture production that also maintains the quality of our environment,” says Brown. “We believe the work conducted here and at the nine other research and education centers across the state positively impacts every Tennessean every day.”
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