Pierce College Explores Uses for 240-Acre Farm

Signaling Los Angeles Pierce College’s strongest commitment to agricultural education in years, President Rocky Young hosted an unprecedented campus meeting 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.