Views Vary on How to Reap the Benefits of Pierce Farm
Fifty years ago this fall, the Clarence W. Pierce School of Agriculture was founded on 420 rolling acres of farmland in Woodland Hills. From nine tin military surplus bungalows and a few dozen students, the college, which came to be called Los Angeles Pierce College, grew into one of the state’s premier two-year agricultural institutions. And by the mid-1970s, 2,000 students were enrolling each semester in agriculture programs. But as suburbia surrounded the school’s 240-acre farm, and small family farms began to be replaced by gigantic corporate-run operations, the agriculture program began to falter. Enrollments plummeted. College presidents came and went. The Los Angeles Community College District Board of Trustees has spent the last decade and a half trying to decide what to do with the farm--a swatch of land beloved by neighbors but extremely expensive to maintain, and worth hundreds of thousands of dollars per acre if developed. Cancellation recently of two long-popular events, an intercollegiate rodeo and Fourth of July fireworks, raised questions in the community about the relationship between school and neighborhood. Times staff writer ERIC SLATER spoke with three people--the president of the college, a longtime critic of the agriculture program, and an agriculture student--about the future of the farm and agricultural education at Pierce.
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E. BING INOCENCIO
The president of Pierce, Inocencio will begin his second year at the helm of the college in the fall.
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There has been no discussion whatsoever of doing away with the farm or the agriculture program. I will not participate in speculation about the future of the farm.
Our No. 1 priority is to perform the greatest good for the greatest number of students. After all, we are a college.
A lot of people think of us in other contexts, but we are first of all a college. We exist for students.
As long as we have a viable agriculture program, it will need a lab, and that lab is the farm. If the program declines, we will have to look at it. If it gets better, we will celebrate.
It took the agriculture program years to get to the state it is in now. It will take time to change.
I am revitalizing the whole program, including agriculture.
We have to make sure we offer our students very strong, very solid academic programs, and that includes agriculture. There are parts of the agriculture program that are very strong, like the pre-veterinarian program. Maybe we could shift some of the resources into the stronger parts of the program.
Improving the program is not a minor feat, especially when you have a deficit to overcome [at the college] of perhaps $1.5 million or $1.8 million now.
Curriculum development is a very slow process.
It’s not an easy job, as I tell people who sometimes question my sanity for coming here.
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M. STEPHEN SHELDON
Sheldon, a Studio City resident, served as Pierce’s director of institutional research from the mid-1970s to the early 1980s, and has long been a critic of the college’s agriculture programs.
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The reason they like the farm in Woodland Hills is because it’s good for property values. It keeps the property values up. The ones who like the agriculture program are the professors and the neighbors whose property values stay high.
Pierce is a relatively good community college. But to devote these kind of resources to such a small proportion of the student body is nonsense. The hay bill used to run $25,000 a year. It costs a heap of money to maintain the farm.
The nursing program is good. The computer science program is good now. Put the money there.
What they ought to do is make a small working farm out of this, instead of offering everything from flower arrangement courses to horseback riding. They could make a small working farm out of it and show elementary school kids [how a farm works]. That would be fine.
The answer to the problem is not to continue spending all that money on a program that serves relatively few students.
Everybody likes the idea of a farm. But it costs. If you can’t afford it, you have to be realistic and face that fact.
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MARLA SCRIPTER
A 43-year-old registered nurse, Scripter has been enrolled in the agriculture program at Pierce for three semesters. She is the commissioner of agriculture for Pierce’s student government.
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The farm has a huge amount of potential. There is a tremendous interest in agriculture from an educational standpoint--from cloning sheep to cloning tomatoes, from biotech to medicine. There is also a tremendous need for education in agriculture and a tremendous need for educated people to work in agriculture.
Also, the scientific community and the political community are realizing that what’s gone on in farming for the last 50 years cannot go on for the next 50 years--the poisoning of the water table, the use of herbicides. We have the ability here to make environmentally responsible, economically responsible agricultural education available to metropolitan students.
I think there’s a tremendous potential to educate, and not only students. We can be educating our political leaders about our water policy and how it should change, pesticide policy, fertilizer policy.
But the administration and the trustees, they don’t have the vision. They don’t see this for its potential. They see it as an economic drain.
Dr. Inocencio has a responsibility to do his best to make this farm successful, and I don’t think he’s done that. I know there are lots of problems--there are personnel problems, there are financial problems. But I think it’s just an issue of strategy.
I think that it’s important to pick out parts of the farm that have potential and plan the management of them in a responsible way and allow them to make money.
We have a swine unit here, for example. The livestock is partially in place, but the technical staff . . . have not been in place to give the unit the type of management it needs. We have the building. We could very easily have all the livestock. But we need consistent management. It should be running close to its maximum . . . if we’re serious about teaching agriculture.
It is appropriate to have agriculture in the urban and suburban areas because it maintains quality of life. There is a place for agriculture in the city, and economically viable agriculture.
If you consider why downtown L.A., South-Central L.A., East L.A. are such dismal places, it’s because there is no green space. It’s so overdeveloped.
Pierce has a place. I think that Pierce could be a real jewel. But it requires a commitment. And there just isn’t that commitment to make it go.
