Today, the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences’ field days provide a focal point for that activity, giving growers the chance to see how new varieties fare in the field and hear about breakthroughs in disease, weed and insect control.

For more than 20 years, these events fell under the aegis of Dr. George Kriz. Kriz, an agricultural engineer by training, retired from the College in October as associate director of the North Carolina Agricultural Research Service.

His retirement served as an occasion to reminisce on his 34-year tenure at N.C. State and especially the value of field days to the North Carolina farmers.

Kriz explained that present-day field days grew out of the College’s land-grant mandate to ensure that farmers and others have access to its research base. As early as the 1880s, N.C. State and the state agriculture department were attracting tens of thousands of people to farmers’ institutes held around North Carolina. Then came on-farm demonstrations aimed at combatting the ravages of the boll weevil and even 1908’s "corn trains," when experts with the Agricultural Experiment Station (now the agricultural research service) would hop on Norfolk and Southern Railway cars for two-hour stops in 20 towns.

Over the years, the College and the North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services assembled a network of outlying research stations where faculty members could both demonstrate new technology and develop it under real-world conditions. These 16 stations represent different geographic and environmental conditions in the state, from the Tidewater Research Station near Plymouth to the Upper Mountain Research Station near Laurel Springs.

The plots that researchers establish at these stations often serve double-duty as the setting for field days.

Over the years, the field day has evolved from what Kriz described as "basically a social event with some education — a time when farmers would bring their families to this big gathering generally with a meal tied to it." As farming became more competitive, the College responded by offering more intensive and specialized field days.

These field days typically focus on a commodity — burley tobacco, for example, or greenhouse vegetables — and are co-sponsored by a corresponding commodity group. But the College also hosts events organized around topics such as organic production and precision farming.

Many of the field days offer professionals the chance to earn continuing education credits that they need to maintain their pesticide and soil science certifications. Among them is the perennially popular Professional Turf and Landscape Field Day, now perhaps the largest of the field days. Each May, this event attracts more than 1,100 people to the JC Raulston Arboretum.

Then there are the more specialized events, such as the Vegetable Weed Tour, which caters to a few dozen people, mainly from the agrichemical industry.

In all, the College has hosted some 200 field days since 1978, when Kriz began overseeing them.

Preparing each event requires the behind-the-scenes work of a dozen or so people who set the day’s agenda; arrange for parking and security; line up co-sponsors; set up demonstration plots; prepare signs, handouts, programs and other printed materials; and spread the word to farmers and the general public.

Kriz, known for his organizational skills, has been the one who’s dotted each I and crossed each T, making sure the events run like clockwork. His reward, he said, is seeing a faculty member convey information in "good laymen’s terms and it clicks with the participants." He pointed to a moment when he saw Drs. Ron Heiniger and Randy Weisz of the crop science department discuss new precision farming methods.

"There were people there who were saying, ‘How soon is this going to be on the Web?’" Kriz recalled. "It’s so hard to see if things that are demonstrated and discussed at a given field day are being adopted, but it is occasions such as this one that make me confident that we have seen significant changes take place because our faculty members are willing to get out there and share what they know with people who can use it."