Public lands designated with the 1862 Morrill Act were largely contained in Klamath & Lake counties; as such, our region has a long and enduring history with Oregon State University and its origin. In 1914, the Smith-Lever Act established the Cooperative Extension Service; agricultural research programs at the Klamath AES began in 1937 and the Klamath County Court provided additional funds in 1944 to support research on a wider range of soils and crops.
AES facilities at KBREC are owned by Klamath County and are leased to OSU at minimal-to-no cost. KBREC has approximately 86.5 acres of farm ground, of which about 55 acres are suitable for research; approximately 40 additional acres of land 25 miles west of Klamath Falls are leased. Faculty currently co-located at the Agricultural Experiment Station site serve many different disciplines for the region including: Crops and Soils, Livestock, Forages & and Rangeland, Horticulture, Forestry, 4-H Youth Development, Family & Community Health, and SNAP-Ed.
Klamath County voters approved a service district in 2015 which has stabilized local financial support for Extension and Research activities after several years of serious budgetary shortfalls made the danger of zero financial support a real possibility.
Partnerships include various local advisory committees representing individual commodities, OSU scientists from other campus departments and branch research stations, University of California scientists at the Intermountain Research & Extension Center, scientists from Washington State University, University of Idaho, and the USDA-ARS facilities in Prosser, WA and Aberdeen, ID.
In recent years, Klamath County has ranked 5th in total agricultural farm gate value of the 36 counties in Oregon.
