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Almost 150 years have passed since U.S. public-sector agricultural research and development (R&D) began in earnest with the establishment of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the passage of the Morrill Land Grant College Act in 1862, to be followed 25 years later by the passage of the Hatch Experiment Station Act in 1887. During that time, and especially in the more recent decades, U.S. agriculture changed dramatically. Public and private agricultural R&D played a major role in bringing about those changes, and the R&D systems and institutions evolved alongside and as part of agriculture.