Lentz loves agriculture

This story appeared in the spring 2026 edition of Roots magazine, a collaborative agriculture publication by the Sandusky Register, Norwalk Reflector, Tiffin Advertiser-Tribune, Findlay Courier and Fostoria Review-Times. Ed Lentz, a professor and extension agriculture educator at the Ohio State University Extension, Hancock County, has been teaching the next generation of farmers in America his passion of agronomy. Lentz, working with OSU Extension since 1997 and in Hancock County since 2011, appreciates teaching agronomy in communities with substantial farmland, like Hancock County. "My background is in agronomy, and a large area of our county is crops, and so I provide expertise and programming in the agronomic crops growing in the area," Lentz said. To Lentz, agronomy is "all aspects of what it takes to grow a crop." "You have to have knowledge of the soils. You have to have knowledge of what the crop's needs are, including the pests that attack it, how it grows, the fertilizers, basically anything that has to do with growing a crop on the farm," Lentz said. Growing up, Lentz would visit his grandfather's farm and knew from a young age he wanted to do something involving plants. "My grandfather had a farm. I knew I really liked to work with plants. I have a botany side, there's some career paths you can go in botany, you can go in horticulture, you can go in forestry, you can go in agronomy or you can be just a true botanist," Lentz said. "I like the plant world, and I'll just be frank, the reason why I want agronomy is that there's employment opportunities, and you still work with plants." Linked to land grants Lentz, who has worked in agronomy for 50 years, got his bachelor's in agronomy from the University of Missouri, Columbia; his master's in plant breeding and genetics from the University of Missouri, Columbia; and his doctorate in crop production and physiology from Iowa State University. Today, Lentz works for an OSU Extension, which, in his case, helps bring the study of agronomy to the public. Extensions came from the Smith-Lever Act, but go all the way back to the Land Grant System, which Lentz explained: "Back in the time of the early 1860s, there was a concern that we have all these liberal arts universities, but there's nobody that's teaching more practical things, such as agriculture and engineering. And so they set up this university system in every state that would focus on engineering and agriculture. "And how they paid for those institutions is by selling government land. OSU is Ohio's land-grant institution. Then later on in 1914, they had a thing called the Smith-Lever Act, which formed extensions. "The whole idea was that we have all these great ideas and things we're learning at the university, but it's not getting to the public, and so they set up the extension service. So every county would have an extension office. They would be connected to their land-grant university." A 'great county to work with' Lentz enjoys teaching for an OSU Extension because he's not only teaching his students, but informing the public. "For me in agriculture, my job is to make sure that we're getting educational research information to Hancock County people, and I'm also sharing the needs of this county back to the university on what they feel like they need more research done to make them moresuccessful," Lentz said. Lentz is also the coordinator for the Master Gardener program, which hosts "educational programs and activities for Ohio residents through their local OSU Extension county office" and addresses homeowners' horticulture questions, as said on the OSU website. Because of this, Lentz says the best part of his career is the interaction with people in Hancock County. "The people in Hancock County are wonderful to work with. They're very cooperative. They're very future-looking and always looking at better ways to improve and take care of what they have now for the next generations," Lentz said. "I love the plants and I love the crops, but I would say, interacting with the farmers and then the people in town with their horticulture needs, that's probably the best part. "It's just that interaction and being able to share the university information and what knowledge I may have gathered over the years, and in hearing their stories about their successes and what they have gone through," he added. "I think this is a great county to work with, the people are wonderful." In the agronomy field, Lentz enjoys seeing the discoveries over his 50-year career. "The advancements that we have made in crop production, it's just unreal," Lentz said. "As far as the quality of the food we produce, the yields we continue to increase because we have less and less land every year to grow crops because of development, and we are still able to produce more food than our country needs so we can export it, and it's all because of the hard work by agronomists, geneticists, plant breeders, pathologists, entomologists, all that working together."