In the not-too-distant future, a whole crop of college students will graduate from Blue Mountain Community College with knowledge and skills needed to be players in the world of irrigated agriculture, thanks to the Precision Irrigated Agriculture Center.
But first, the center has to be built, and on Thursday, BMCC and Oregon State University officials broke ground for the center that is expected to house students about a year from now. The ceremony took place under sunny skies on the grounds of the Oregon State University Hermiston Agricultural Research and Extension Center.
“We are very excited to be turning the first shovel of dirt for the Precision Irrigated Agriculture Center,” said BMCC President Cam Preus. “Words cannot capture how much we at BMCC have appreciated our partnership with OSU and Phil Hamm. He’s done his best to cut through all the bureaucratic red tape in Corvallis.”
The center will house BMCC’s precision irrigation program, which will train students how to utilize the latest technologies – such as GPS, satellites, unmanned aerial systems and smartphones – to make agricultural irrigation more efficient. Precision agriculture is centered around the idea of site-specific farming – using only what you need (i.e., water, fertilizer, seeding rates, etc.) right when and where you need it.
The project is expected to be completed in winter 2017.
Hamm, director of the OSU ag experiment station in Hermiston, said he was excited to see the project get under way.
“Ag is the root of our economy,” he said. “With this center, students can learn about irrigated agriculture. I’m looking forward to seeing it come to fruition.”
The Precision Irrigated Agriculture Center is the first of three major BMCC projects. BMCC expects to break ground on its second major bond construction project in Boardman – the Workforce Training Center – in late May, and will begin construction on the rebuild of its agricultural center (Facility for Agricultural Resource Management, or FARM) in June. BMCC will also begin work on upgrades to electrical and HVAC systems, as well as natural gas line repairs, this summer.
Voters approved BMCC’s $23 million capital construction bond in May 2015, which included all of these projects, as well as additional safety, security and technology improvements, as well as improvements to the Milton-Freewater Center.
