Are Long-Term Field Experiments Worth the Cost?.

Long-term field experiments exist at many sites across the USA and the world.  The most well-known long-term field experiments are those at the Rothamsted Experiment Station in the UK. Two of the most famous in the USA are the Morrow Plots in Illinois and Sanborn Field in Missouri.   Scientists and administrators have repeatedly asked the same basic questions: “Are these experiments worth the cost?” and “Are we still learning something from them?”  These questions are raised more frequently as research budgets become more tenuous.  Do costly long-term field experiments have any value relative to what some would label “cutting edge” research?  Our objective is to use the history and scientific contributions of a more recently established (1970) long-term soil management experiment at the University of Nebraska High Plains Agricultural Laboratory to provide modern evidence that maintaining existing long-term field experiments, and initiating new ones, remains a valuable and critical investment.  We will show how an experiment conceived to study one objective has impacted numerous other pertinent issues over the last 40-year period.  We will argue that scientists and administrators should be protecting existing long-term field experiments and we will suggest potential funding mechanisms.