American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers

The American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE) is an international professional society devoted to agricultural and biological engineering. It was founded in December 1907 at the University of Wisconsin-Madison as the American Society of Agricultural Engineers (ASAE) and is now based in St. Joseph, Michigan. Today the organization has about 9000 members in over 100 countries. ASABE serves many functions: it provides a forum for communication of research findings through conferences, scientific journals, and a magazine; it develops standards of practice; it provides opportunities for members to network.

After years of debate, members of the organization voted in 2005 to modify the name to better reflect the changes in the profession. For many years, the discipline had broadened to include engineering for biological systems, and the name change simply reflected this reality. Most of the university departments of agricultural engineering had already changed their names. The increase in biological engineering led to a number of breakthroughs that greatly affected the global agriculture system of modern society. Genetically modified organisms for instance have led to massive overhauls in food production, logistics and trade.