Pampanga State Agricultural University
| Pamantasang Pang-agrikultura ng Pampanga | |
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Former names
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| Motto | The University with a heart for HUMANE (HUManity, Agriculture, Nature and Entrepreneurship) Development |
| Type | State University |
| Established | 1885 (as La Granja Modelo de Luzon) |
| President | Honorio M. Soriano, Jr., Ph.D. |
| Location | Magalang, Pampanga, Philippines |
| Colors | Green and Yellow |
| Mascot | Aglibut Sweet |
| Website | psau |
The Pampanga State Agricultural University or PSAU is a state university located in the municipality of Magalang, Pampanga, Philippines. Strategically nestled among the foothills on the western slope of majestic Mount Arayat, nearly 700 hectares of government agricultural lands, it is about 3.5 km east of the town proper of Magalang, and about 15 km southwest is Angeles City and Clark Field Special Economic Zone. Farther southeast about 25 km lies the City of San Fernando, the capital of Pampanga.
The idea of establishing an agricultural experiment station was hatched in 1873 by Spanish businessman Don Bernardo Garcia Coteron and his partner, Don Jose Pesaña Piñol. The proposed experiment station was named La Granja Modelo de Luzon (The Model Farm of Luzon). They applied for royal grant in the same year, and it was granted in 1874. The granja will serve an experiment station for their company, Coteron y Compañia for propagation, experimentation and cultivation of their cash crops especially in tobacco. It has three hundred hectares of land, located in San Isidro, Nueva Ecija and took years to construct necessary structures.
On November 15, 1881, with the creation of La Comision Agronomica de Filipinas; it took over the operations of granja and appointed its first director, Don Jose Alemany Penalva. Due to insufficient and bad condition of the land, on March 20, 1885, the Spanish government transferred the granja from San Isidro, Nueva Ecija to the foothills of Mt. Arayat in Magalang, Pampanga. Its governing charter was issued by Queen Maria Christina on January 30, 1886. The new land has nine hundred hectares; cleared mostly by the polistas. The granja was transformed into a full agricultural experiment station equipped with school and staff buildings, animal pens, sugar mill, alcohol distillery and a weather observatory. The station was headed by a director (equivalent to agricultural engineer), assisted by an ayundante de montes and a perito agricola, who were all Spaniards. It also housed a fifty men companias disciplinarias providing rotational security to the granja. The granja offered two programs, first and most important was a three-year sequence in farm management, leading to the title of perito agricola. The candidates who wanted this title had to demonstrate the possession of suitable secondary-level schooling in geometry, trigonometry, drawing physics, and chemistry, prior to entrance. The other program, which conferred the title of capataz de cultivo, concerned itself with the preparation of field foremen and livestock supervisors. Those who obtained these titles, they were conferred as graduates equivalent to a college graduate both in the Philippines and Spain. The granja has variety of breeds of animals such as buffaloes, cattle, wild pigs, goats, horses, chickens, ducks and doves. La Granja devoted its cultivation and experimentation of wheat, sorghum, sesame, rice, corn, indigo, tobacco, peanuts, potatoes, sugarcane and alfalfa.
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