Looking to the Future
OARDC’s Wooster campus is located just south of the town and features Secrest Arboretum, ATI, and BioHio Research Park.
Back when the OARDC was the OAES, its first mission was to provide farmers with better production techniques to supply Ohio with quality foods. Although this was confined to the state of Ohio in the past, the OARDC’s current mission says their research is meant to aid, “the people of Ohio, the nation and world”.1 The OARDC of today works with similar issues as it did in the twentieth century, but now it works outside of just Ohio in aiding environmental stability and increase food security. Food insecurity is a global issue, and also one that directly impacts Ohioans. The OARDC’s 2017 Impacts Article states that 1 in 6 Ohioans, as well as about 11% of the world’s population, are food insecure, meaning they do not have stable access to nutritious foods. The OARDC is still working on increasing crop yields to alleviate some of these issues. Ongoing projects include reexamining Ohio’s Phosphorous Risk Index to improve surface water and protecting Ohio trees such as buckeyes and sugar maples from tree pests.3
The old administration building, one of the first building’s completed on the Madison Hill in 1894, still stands today.
The OARDC continues to serve Ohio and the world with its agricultural research, just as its founders intended. It is a symbol and reminder that the mission of sustainability, not only in Ohio but worldwide, is ongoing. But just as its founders did, the staff and students at the OARDC continue to push science and society forward.
1 The Ohio State University OARDC, “Mission,” About Us, accessed June 5, 2017, https://oardc.osu.edu/about.
2 “OARDC Impacts: Hunger and Food Security,” Ohio Research and Development Center, 2017, https://oardc.osu.edu/sites/oardc/files/imce/files/OARDC_impacts/HungerAndFoodSecurity.pdf.
3“OARDC Annual Report 2015,” Ohio Research and Development Center, 2015, accessed June 5, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/1811/75453.