Meeting Sows Seeds of Hope for Future of Pierce College Farm

Signaling Pierce College’s strongest commitment to agricultural education in years, President Rocky Young hosted an unprecedented campus meeting last week with 40 agriculture experts to discuss the future of the campus’ 240-acre farm.

The one-day planning session marked a dramatic turnaround for Pierce administrators, who as recently as last summer were considering proposals to build a golf course on the farm--one of the Valley’s largest remaining open spaces and the community college’s prime asset.

The conference Friday was attended by professors from Cal Poly Pomona and UC Davis--the nation’s largest agriculture school--and experts from various farming, equine, veterinarian and biotechnology organizations. The group will issue a report based on its suggestions for the farm, and Young said he expects to have a working plan in place by February.

“If there was any epiphany during the day,” Young said Monday, “it was the recognition that we could do all this and meet everybody’s needs.”

Among the issues raised at the meeting were:

* Should the agriculture program focus on training students for college transfer or on upgrading the skills of agricultural professionals?

* Should the agriculture department be a local or regional program?

* Should the farm be an agricultural laboratory for bioengineering, organic farming and other cutting-edge farming techniques, or should Pierce focus on production and attempt to reap a profit?

Two years ago, when Pierce’s budget was deeply in the red, then-President E. Bing Inocencio proposed developing the farm into a golf course or hotel to raise funds. The golf course plan was endorsed by developers and many faculty members, but the resulting outcry from neighboring residents and farm supporters eventually led to Inocencio’s departure. The college’s finances have since rebounded.

In August, the Los Angeles Community College Board of Trustees scrapped three proposals to build a golf course because trustees could not determine how it would fit with the emerging master plan for Pierce College.

“I’m not looking at hotels,” Young said. “We have a chunk of land that was committed to the agriculture program, and before we look at any alternative purposes, we have to see what we can do in agriculture.”

If Young is successful, it would be a reversal of a long decline in the school’s once famed agriculture program.

In 1933, when Woodland Hills had more orange groves than parking lots, Pierce was founded to teach students how to work the land. Pierce’s Agriculture and Natural Resources Management Department grew in proportion to the overall student population, which peaked in the mid-1980s.

*

“Back then we had 28 students per class and had 16 part-time professors,” said department chairman Dick South. That changed when enrollments began to slide in the early 1990s. “Now we have no part-time instructors.”

Agriculture is still a relatively popular subject among Pierce students, especially since all the department’s courses are elective, South said. But funding for the department has dwindled over the years, said Pierce administrators, and its programs have not kept pace with the latest developments in the field.

The meeting culminated six months of preparation by Young, who last summer contacted Mike Campbell, assistant dean at UC Davis’ Department of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences. Campbell visited Pierce’s farm and was impressed with what he saw.

“They have a tremendous asset there,” Campbell said of the farm. “It certainly is one of the last farms in that region--you couldn’t buy an asset like that now.”

Campbell said he was also impressed by Pierce’s transfer rate, one of the highest of California’s community colleges.

“We want to work with them to attract their students to UC Davis,” Campbell said.

Young sent invitations to experts in various fields to meet at the college for a private meeting with him, Pierce agriculture professors and three of his vice presidents.

Bill Silag, assistant director of the California Food and Fiber Futures Project--a pro-agriculture organization funded by the Kellogg Foundation--facilitated the meeting.

The conference began with a hayride tour of the farm. Then the participants broke into smaller groups.

“We asked, ‘Where should Pierce be 20, 25 years from now?’ ” Silag said.

Most participants agreed Pierce should look into biotechnology as a field of study.

Other areas suggested leaned toward urban and suburban applications of agriculture, such as ornamental horticulture, home-grown produce, companion-animal care and agriculture’s service end: marketing, distribution, quality control and processing.

*

Los Angeles County was once America’s No. 1 agricultural resource. Although the county no longer holds that distinction, agriculture is still big business in Los Angeles--especially in the Antelope Valley.

According to the Los Angeles Department of Agriculture Weights and Measures, agriculture in 1998 generated $260 million in the county, representing a 24% increase since 1996. Of that figure, Los Angeles County has a $138-million nursery industry, a $40-million vegetable industry and a $2-million honey industry.

Department Commissioner Cato Fisksdal estimated that one out of every 10 jobs in the county is somehow connected to agriculture.

“There’s that huge port in Long Beach,” Fisksdal said, “and much of the export out of California goes out of that harbor.”

For Pierce’s farm program to flower, Campbell said, the college must create partnerships with private agricultural interests, such as Seminis, an Oxnard-based vegetable seed company that controls 25% of the world’s vegetable seed market.

“These companies are looking for technically trained people to work in laboratories,” he said. “Those careers are expanding.”