Iowa State University’s student-run farm, known as Ag 450, is marking eight decades in operation. Skyler Rinker, an ISU ag ed professor, says students get to learn about the day-to-day work required to run a farm, everything from the financial side to feeding livestock to fine-tuning combines.
“We focus on farm management and operation,” Rinker says. “We focus on many facets of production agriculture. We’re a corn and soybean operation and we also custom feed pigs, and as the course was founded on in 1943, we try to take the science and we put it into practice.”
Over the 80 years, the farm has planted a host of crops, with livestock ranging from cows, pigs and chickens to mules. The first tractor was purchased in 1950, and the first beef production program began in the 1960s.
“We do talk about the physical operations of a farm and the work that does need to be done and how to go about that,” Rinker says, “but we do focus on the management piece, too, how we manage our finances, how we manage our operations, looking at return on investments, our break-evens and then how do we market our commodities?”
Cooper Warner, an ISU senior in ag business, says he’s learning valuable lessons on Ag 450. “They have quite a good setup for their financial papers and helping someone that might not be exposed to that as much get a better experience on some of the processes that go on,” Warner says. “In the greater scheme of it, you can’t just run a farm just by operating it, you need to know how to manage it and manage your time properly.”
Just in sheer size, the farm was founded on the Ames campus with 187 acres, while it’s grown to more than 600 acres today. “The farm has changed and evolved over time, just as many farms have had to do, as agriculture and the demands of agriculture have changed as well,” Rinker says. “So to make it to 80 years is phenomenal, and really the credit goes out to the instructors and the farm operators and the students that have come before us.”
Some 80 to 100 students enroll in the course every year.