Land-Grant Universities, Extension Offices

Offer a Portal to Local Farmers

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For maltsters, distillers, or brewers who are looking for farmers to work with directly, land-grant universities and their associated agricultural extension offices are an invaluable resource.

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First created in 1862 by the Morrill Act (with subsequent expansions to the system), this set of schools is named for the federal lands that were granted to the states to sell and finance the endowment of these universities.

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The system was created to provide for publicly funded institutions that would maintain some focus on agricultural matters, such as researching fertilizers and herbicides or breeding new lines of grain. (These schools generally maintain a broad curriculum and are not agricultural schools to the exclusion of other disciplines.)

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Most land-grant schools are large state universities, such as Colorado State University or Kansas State University, though a few are private schools, including Cornell and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

As a result of the land-grant university system, every state is home to at least one university that specializes in local agriculture, often including fields such as grain breeding and best-practices research.

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In addition to the research aspect of the land-grant university system, a core tenet of the system is the non-formal educational aspect of extension offices, which serve as an intersection of the USDA and the university system. Extension offices exist with the goal of providing research-based information to the public to encourage self-sufficiency, self-improvement, and appropriate resource management.

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When Westland Distillery, which now works hand-in-glove with local farmers and Skagit Valley Malting, first went looking for farmers to work with, they started with the local extension office at Mount Vernon, home to the Washington State University Bread Lab grain breeding program.

The local extension office will be able to connect brewers, maltsters, and distillers with farmers, as well as recommend varieties and practices to help ensure a successful crop. Someone at the local land-grant university may even be able to help advise farmers unfamiliar with the requirements of malting barley versus feed barley.

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A map and list of land-grant colleges can be found here with an interactive map here. A variety of USDA resources can be found here.