By STAN MADDUX

Indiana Correspondent

WANATAH, Ind. — Feeding the world’s growing population and helping farmers improve their bottom lines remains the mission 100 years later at Pinney-Purdue Research Farm in northwestern Indiana.

William E. Pinney donated the property to Purdue University to use strictly for the betterment of farming and home life on farms, under an agreement among all parties involved in the transaction. A marker on the Pinney homestead reads: “This farm is dedicated to the advancement of agriculture and enrichment of country life.”

According to history, the beginnings of the property are traced to his father, William E. Pinney Sr., coming to Indiana with his family in 1837 from Ohio. They traveled in a covered wagon pulled by a team of oxen across swamps and through forests.

The family also brought other cattle on their journey and established an 80-acre farm that grew to more than 700 acres in LaPorte and Porter counties. Pinney, born in 1847 and raised on the farm, went on to become a prominent local attorney specializing in real estate transactions. He died in 1924 at his daughter’s home in Chicago.

Pinney-Purdue farm in Wanatah consists of about 640 acres used mostly for testing on corn and soybeans. Wheat and vegetables are raised, as well, for research purposes. There’s also a wooded area along with a small wetlands. It’s one of eight Purdue-owned research farms across the state.

Gary Tragesser, superintendent at Pinney-Purdue, said the bulk of the work there nowadays involves testing new fertilizer and herbicide products as they’re being developed in the private sector, to determine their effectiveness on crops. That research is usually funded by the companies developing the products.

“That’s what farmers want to know. They want to know if new products are going to help their operation or not,” he said.

The vegetables raised at Pinney-Purdue are done so in a manner to try to meet needs expressed mostly by area growers. For example, some of the vegetables here are raised in high tunnels popular among growers wanting early-spring and late-fall crops, in order to meet higher consumer demand for locally grown produce on a year-round basis.

Experiments in forestry include cross-breeding of butternut trees to develop versions more resistant to a disease causing premature death in some of the butternuts in the general population.

Annual field days at Pinney-Purdue typically draw more than 400 farmers in the region wanting to know the latest developments in agriculture and to try new products. “The research on this farm is still really relevant to the active farm operations in this areas,” Tragesser said.

Gene Matzat, an educator at the Purdue extension office in La Porte, said other research includes developing ways to fight tar spot, which has showed up in more of the corn here in recent years after migrating from the South. He said specialists from Purdue also use the farm to study other areas of science such as botany, insects, plant pathology, and nutrition.

For the most part, the findings at each of the Purdue research farms are better suited for their respective areas because of how soil types differ throughout the state. The soil at Pinney-Purdue, for example, is consistent with the sandier, muckier types in northwestern Indiana.

“It’s nice to have local research that’s done here that can be strictly applied to our fields,” Matzat explained.

There used to be livestock research at Pinney-Purdue but that ended in the mid-1980s when the much-heralded Red Poll cattle herd was sold. The dual-purpose breed developed in England in the 19th century was especially popular in the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s for being able to produce high-quality beef and milk.

However, Tragesser said the Red Poll’s popularity began declining when commercial beef producers turned more toward single-purpose breeds, and Purdue decided it was no longer feasible from a financial standpoint to keep its herd of about 200 animals.

Unless something unexpected occurs, Tragesser sees no reason for a bicentennial not to be celebrated at Pinney-Purdue in another century, because of how its research keeps up with the times. “I believe we’ll definitely see another 100, as long as farming is a large part of the economy in the area.”