Elo—Lancaster Farming, Saturday, March 3,1984
A forward thinker
who’s a little out ahead
NEWARK, Del. Agronomist
William H. Mitchell retired Dec.
31, after more than 35 years of
service as a teacher, researcher
and extension specialist at the
University of Delaware. Described
by one long-time colleague as a
“forward thinker who’s always a
little out ahead,” Mitchell is well
known for his innovative approach
to production problems and his
willingness to adopt new
agricultural technologies to solve
them. A native of New England, he
possesses a generous amount of
that legendary commodity,
Yankee ingenuity, too.
During his tenure at the
university, the agronomist par
ticipated in many successful
research and extension programs
involving forage, turf, corn, and
soybean production. He is
probably best known for his work
in the areas of crop nutrition, no-
and irrigation. He also was
an inspired teacher with a knack
for involving both undergraduate
and graduate students in research.
Many of his former students are
now working in agriculture,
particularly in the chemical in
dustry.
As a boy growing up on a New
Hampshire farm, Mitchell never
dreamed that one day he would
help educate other farmers. “If it
hadn’t been for an uncle who was a
real scholar and taught in a private
school all his life, I’d probably still
be farming. He took a special in
terest in me and he’s the one who
encouraged me to go to college. ’ ’
Mitchell’s education was in
terrupted by the outbreak of World
War 11, which he spent in China as
a pilot with General Claire
Chennault’s famed Flying Tigers.
He also spent two years as herd
sman on a 200-acre dairy farm in
Connecticut, and two more as
headmaster of a high school in
Henniker, N.H.
He joined the University of
Delaware’s College of Agricultural
Sciences in 1949 as extension
agronomist and researcher, and
later received a teaching ap
pointment as well.
One of the first things Mitchell
got involved in after his arrival in
Delaware was the extension
sponsored Greener Pastures
program. Modeled after a similar
New England program, its purpose
was to help local dairy farmers
improve pasture and roughage
quality through the adoption of
new forage research and so im
prove milk production.
Another of Mitchell’s major
commitments during the 1950 s was
a joint extension/industry project
called the ‘‘loo Bushel Corn Club.”
Many older farmers probably
remember this educational effort,
which was aimed at boosting corn
yields through the application of
new technology.
In the area of turf research,
during the 1970 s Mitchell in
troduced a method for speeding
commercial sod production by
incorporating plastic netting into
the soil at planting time to serve as
support for the young grass. With
netting, sod can be harvested six
months after seeding, rather than
the usual two years. The
technique, now in commercial use
on some area sod farms, also saves
valuable topsoil and gives a
lighter, stronger, more
manageable product. He also
showed that, with proper
management, sewage sludge and
recycled solid waste can be used as
growing mediums for sod.
As an agronomist, Mitchell did
considerable work on the use of
winter legumes as a nitrogen
source, once a standard farming
practice. As commercial nitrogen
Agronomist Bill Mitchell reminisces about his long career
helping Delaware farmers. The former researcher, teacher
and extension specialist retired Dec. 31 from the University
of Delaware after 35 years of service.
supplies became more expensive,
he encouraged growers to resume
using these crops and demon
strated the overall benefits of
leguminous covers in no-till corn
production
He was also one of the first
scientists to pomtout the
economies that financially hard
pressed farmers could realize by
fertilizing crops on the basis of soil
tests rather than habit and by
taking advantage of the tremen
dous residual base of potassium
and phosphorus in many Delaware
soils. To help corn producers get
maximum benefit from starter
fertilizers, he conducted con
siderable research on the effects
on seedling development and yield
of various nitrogen forms and their
placement in the seedbed.
Long a champion of irrigation, in
the late 1970 s Mitchell helped
organize the extension service’s
First Stale Irrigation Program.
This program was designed to help
corn farmers obtain consistently
higher yields under overhead
sprinkler systems by identifying
factors, other than water, which
limit yield. The work involved
looking closely at the corn plant’s
nutritional needs through periodic
tissue analysis, then modifying
cultural practices to meet these
needs.
A few years later the agronomist
conducted further studies on the
effects of irrigation on crop per
formance, during a forage
research project sponsored by the
University of Delaware Research
Foundation on the George
Weymouth horse in farm in
Middletown. Corn prices were
severely depressed at the time and
Mitchell and former extension
farm management specialist W.T.
McAllister decided to find out
whether there was a profitable
way farmers could grow hay as a
cash crop for the state’s then
sizeable race horse industry.
“When we started the project,
one of the first things we did was
dig a 2 million-gallon pond and put
sprinkler irrigation on 100 acres of
red clover, timothy and alfalfa,”
Mitchell recalled. As a result of
this project local breeders and
trainers abandoned their prejudice
against alfalfa hay and began
feeding it to their horses.
Mitchell also studied horse
preferences for different hays and
found that chopping and pelleting
made the less favored kinds more
palatable. As a result, a sub
stantial number of Delaware
farmers went into hay production
for the cash market
Another of the agronomist's
long-standing research interests
was drip irrigation as a more ef
ficient means of delivering
4 r -s
f *
SI DATES
THfU
precious water to field crops. "In
comparing trickle irrigation to
overhead sprinkler systems, you
just had to look down the road to
the time when water would be in
short supply, to realize drip
irrigation would eventually have a
place in row crop production,” he
said.
In the early 19605, following the
lead of a graduate student who had
done research on the technique in
Texas, Mitchell punched holes in
some plastic tubing and set up a
subsurface system for corn at the
Georgetown substation. Results
the first season were dramatic
167 bushels an acre with sub
surface drip irrigation versus 7
bushels without water. So many
people came to look at the corn
that they wore paths around the
plots, he recalled.
“I was so impressed that I felt
we should be using water in our
test work so that it wouldn’t be the
limiting factor in yields. When we
started using drip irrigation as the
water source, we were very
apologetic because people weren’t
irrigating then and they didn’t
think the results meant anything,”
he said.
Mitchell is currently writing up
the results of a corn fertility study
with subsurface drip irrigation,
which he started 18 years ago on
the University of Delaware’s
Newark research farm. A
preliminary look at the results
suggests this study will shed
further light on the availability of
phosphorus and potassium to corn
T * on Delaware soils and the
value ot tissue analysis as a tool in
managing crop fertility.
The agronomist said he feels it’s
uist a matter of time before sub
surtace irrigation becomes ac
cepted in the production of row
crops like corn. Cotton farmers in
the U.S. have already begun to use
1 '■ ' as *hc technology improves,
the practice should attract others.
“In extension educational work
you never know when an idea will
take hold,” Mitchell said.
“‘Economic reasons are often
behind people’s slowness to adopt
an idea. You can’t do a dang thing
until the industry comes along with
the equipment or in the case of
no-tillage the chemicals. After
you have the materials, you need
someone who can put the package
together. Given the right tools,
there’s no telling what people can
accomplish.”
Looking back, the most
satisfying part of his work over the
past 35 years has been helping
people, he said “It takes time
before you k.mw whether you’ve
really helped them, but it’s very
gratifying to see young people
come along and then become
established farmers ”
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