Over a century, Washington State University’s research and extension center has seen a lot of stories and fostered a lot of innovations. Read some of them at these links:
The Irrigated Agriculture Research and Extension Center at Prosser website
HistoryLink essay on WSU Prosser by Elizabeth Gibson (drawing heavily on the essays by Singleton and Proebsting)
AgWeatherNet is the world’s largest public-access weather system updates every 15 minutes via data collected from over 175 stations.
For years, WSU Prosser was the home of WSU’s wine science research. With … » More …
Hugh T. Lovin ’56 MA History
WSU Press: 2017
Growing up on a farm near Inkom, Idaho, the young Hugh Lovin would engineer ways to divert water to the crops he produced for his livestock. Later in life, after years of writing histories of labor, Lovin turned his attention again to irrigation. In a number of articles, collected for the first time in this volume, he traced the history of the “dreamers, schemers, and doers” who brought water … » More …
The irrigated lands and waterways of Washington’s Columbia Basin Project. Read more about the CBP in “Water to the Promised Land.”
Photos by Zach Mazur
As an aquifer declines, farmers hope for water promised 80 years ago.
LAST SUMMER as we stood in the middle of Brad Bailie’s onion fields just north of Connell, the discussion, as discussions seem to do in the Columbia Basin, turned to water.
Bailie ’95 pumps irrigation water from a well drilled down 800 feet. Neighbors have pushed wells down to 2,000 feet. At such depths, the water is often laden with salts and minerals. After a while of irrigating with this water, a crust can form over the soil surface. Farmers must use a variety of means to break up the crust, including … » More …
Uncle Sam took the challenge in the year of ’33
For the farmers and the workers and for all humanity
Now river, you can ramble where the sun sets in the sea
But while you’re rambling, river, you can do some work for me
—Woody Guthrie, “Roll, Columbia, Roll”
In the early 1950s, Washington State College and the Bureau of Reclamation published a Farmer’s Handbook for the Columbia Basin Project. Written for new farmers breaking ground in the newly irrigated Columbia Basin Project, the handbook offered advice on everything from what crops to grow to what kind … » More …
The first thing Jeff Evans, a recent graduate in entrepreneurship, did when he started his senior project was to locate Malawi on a map.
He and engineering students Travis Meyer, Kyle Kraemer, and Dan Good have since learned a lot about this African country, third poorest in the world, and developed a treadle pump they hope will make a positive difference for people there. They traveled to Malawi in March to test their product. Working with Peter Wyeth, associate scientist in International Programs, Trent Bunderson, associate director of International Programs, and faculty advisors Denny Davis and Jerman Rose, the team was part of a unique … » More …
This gem of a book is actually about the gem state, Idaho—specifically, the Snake River Plain of southern Idaho, where farmers, engineers, lawyers, bankers, and politicians have carved an agricultural landscape out of the parched and dusty sagebrush desert. With deft prose and engaging anecdotes, author Mark Fiege (’85 M.A. Hist.), a professor of history at Colorado State University, systematically traces the 100-year history of the creation and maintenance of the irrigation infrastructure that made farming possible in the Snake River plain. Praising it as “an ingenious, intricate, technological system,” Fiege nevertheless offers sober assessments of the economic inefficiencies, ecological losses, engineering foibles, and political … » More …