文档介绍：Studying Agriculture in the US
A listener from China named Walker would like information about agricultural programs in the United States. This is our subject today in week number thirty of our Foreign Student Series.
About one hundred colleges and universities began as public agricultural colleges and continue to teach agriculture. These are called land grant schools. They began with support from the federal government. Federal aid supported the building of most major state universities.
The idea of the land grant college goes back to a law in the eenth century called the Morrill Act. A congressman named Justin Smith Morrill wrote legislation to create at least one in each state.
The name "land grant" came from the kind of aid provided by the government. The government wanted Americans to learn better ways to farm. So it gave thousands of hectares of land to each Northern state.
The idea was that the states would sell the land and use the money to establish colleges. These colleges would teach agriculture, engineering and military science.
Congress passed the law in eighteen sixty-two. This was during the Civil War. Southern states had rebelled against the North and withdrawn from the Union.
Another law created a center at each land grant college to develop new scientific ideas and to help farmers solve problems.
Michigan State University began in 1855 as the Agr