The federal Hatch Act, approved in early March 1887, provided for an appropriation from public land revenue of $15,000 per year to each state or territory in which an agricultural college was established under the Morrill Act of 1862. This was the first national effort to provide a research base in agriculture through the use of public funds. The new fund was to be used in establishing and supporting an agricultural experiment station.
The 1887 Tennessee General Assembly accepted the provisions of the Hatch Act and appropriated any funds received to the University of Tennessee. The experiment stations were to “conduct original research or verify experiments on the physiology of plants and animals; the diseases to which they are severally subject, with the remedies for the same; the chemical composition of useful plants at their different stages of growth; the comparative advantages of a rotative cropping as pursued under a varying series of crops; the capacity of new plants or trees for acclimation; the analysis of soils and water; the chemical composition of manures, natural or artificial, with experiments designed to test their comparative effects on crops of different kinds; the adaptation and value of grasses and forage plants; the composition and digestibility of the different kinds of plant food for domestic animals; the scientific and economic questions involved in the production of butter and cheese; and such other research or experiments bearing directly on the agricultural industry of the United States as may in each case be deemed advisable, having due regard to the varying conditions and needs of the respective States and Territories.”
The Adams Act of 1906 supplemented Hatch Act funds with an additional annual appropriation to rise to an additional $15,000 over five years. The Purnell Act of 1925 added, over time, an additional $60,000 annual appropriation, and the Bankhead-Jones Act of 1935 provided some additional direct funding and a Special Research Fund to be controlled by the secretary of agriculture. The Bankhead-Jones Act was amended by the Research and Marketing Act of 1946, which additionally provided for the USDA to establish laboratories to evaluate new and extended uses of agricultural products. The Adams, Purnell, Bankhead-Jones, and Research and Marketing Acts were all consolidated in 1955 into an expanded Hatch Act.