Penn State’s farms are organized into four separate areas: Farm Operations, which grows crops for the college’s livestock; Animal Operations, which oversees the college’s swine, dairy, beef, and sheep herds; the Rock Springs research farms, used by researchers and extension faculty to find better ways to farm; and the specialized farms for fruit, grapes, and agronomic crops in other parts of the state.

All told, Penn State owns more than 3,900 acres of farmland. The Russell E. Larson Agricultural Research center at Rock Springs, about 10 miles southwest of the University Park campus, comprises 2,000 acres of land. Farm Operations, headquartered across the street from Beaver Stadium, farms about 1,600 acres. The three outlying experiment stations total about 330 acres of land. In addition, about 8,400 acres of forestland are used by the School of Forest Resources, including the Stone Valley Experimental Forest (see “Working in a 7,000-Acre Laboratory,” Winter/Spring 1998).

More than 50 full-time employees work to keep the University’s agricultural operations running. More than 100 tractors, trucks, sprayers, combines, and other vehicles are in use on any given day during the growing season. More than 6,000 animals are housed, fed, and cared for 365 days a year. Undergraduate and graduate students work and study on the farms, using the facilities and acreage as a living laboratory. The farms produce enough crops to feed all the college’s animals, with enough left over to sell on the open market.

“One of Penn State’s big advantages as an agricultural institution is its proximity to farm research facilities,” says senior associate dean emeritus Jim Starling, whose 40-year career was closely intertwined with the development of today’s farm facilities. “If Penn State’s animal facilities or horticultural plots were 20 or so miles away, student involvement would be more difficult and people would be more likely to find an excuse not to use them.”

As the University has grown, Penn State’s farming land has been pushed further outward. In the past 10 years, agricultural land once used by the college has been taken over for the construction of Interstate 99—the new highway linking State College to the Pennsylvania Turnpike and Interstate 80—and for the Penn State Research Park. In fact, over the past 140 years (see “A History of the Rock Springs Facility”), the only constant about our farms is that they always are changing.

A Blue-Sky Research Lab
As visitors approach the horticulture research farm from Route 45 in Spruce Creek Valley, they see a visual hodgepodge. Every plot is crammed with crops ranging from tomatoes to tubers, and there are 12 acres of fruit trees and small fruit plants. Manager Bob Oberheim, an agronomist by training, juggles land requests, crop plots, and unique research projects while finding time to complete his duties as Ag Progress Days manager and as a member of the Pennsylvania Farm Show Commission. “A good manager has to be able to handle diverse responsibilities,” Oberheim says.

Vegetable specialists Mike Orzolek, left, and Bill Lamont check the progress of potato plants in one of Penn State’s high tunnels, a structure that uses plasticulture—methods such as mulches, row covers, and the high tunnel itself—to manipulate temperature, allowing farmers to grow many crops year-round.

The horticulture farm employs three full-time technicians, who handle most of the planting and agricultural work. Some of the crops produced on the farm are sold on the open market, with profits used to offset the farm’s operating budget. Crops not grown in enough quantity to sell wholesale are donated to local charities, such as Meals on Wheels and youth and church groups.

“Much of the plant and genetics research is done in greenhouses and growth chambers these days,” Oberheim says. “But eventually all these high-tech methods must be evaluated on the farm.”

One of the newest technologies being evaluated is a set of 24 plastic-covered structures called “high tunnels.” Over the next five years, vegetable specialists Mike Orzolek and Bill Lamont will conduct growth trials in the largest high tunnel research program in the United States.

To build a high tunnel, plastic sheeting is stretched over a tubular frame the size of a one-car garage. Separate sheets form the roof and two sidewalls so that farmers can raise the wall to ventilate the structure and manipulate air and soil temperatures using the sun’s energy. A one-piece front section has a doorway, but it is designed so that two people can use support poles to prop it up so that a tractor or cultivating equipment can be used inside. As temperatures drop in the fall, farmers can use other plastic technologies to manipulate temperatures inside the structures, such as low tunnels (small plastic-covered frames shaped like Quonset huts), floating row covers made from plastic polymers, and thermal covers, which use reflective surfaces to trap heat around the plants.

“These things should really be called ‘economic development units,’” says Orzolek. “You can grow a wide range of crops, up to 12 months a year.”

Commercial-size versions of high tunnels also protect plants from insects, diseases, wind, and animal damage, virtually eliminating field loss, which can run as high as 25 percent for some crops. Construction costs range from $1,800 to $3,000, compared to $15,000 to $20,000 for a production greenhouse. High tunnels have been used in Europe and Japan for decades, but they are just beginning to be adopted in the United States. Within the next three years, Orzolek and Lamont hope to complete a high-tunnel operating manual for producers.