Henry A. Wallace Beltsville Agricultural Research Center
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The Henry A. Wallace Beltsville Agricultural Research Center, or BARC, is a unit of the United States Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service. It is located in Beltsville, Maryland, and is named for Henry A. Wallace, former United States vice president and secretary of agriculture.
The BARC is the largest agricultural research complex in the world. Among its research programs are Air Quality; Animal Health; Crop Production; Crop Protection and Quarantine; Food Animal Production; Food Safety; Global Change; Human Nutrition; Integrated Farming Systems; Manure and Byproduct Utilization; Methyl Bromide Alternatives; Plant Biological and Molecular Processes; Plant Diseases; Plant Genetic Resources, Genomics, and Genetic Improvement; Quality and Utilization of Agricultural Products; Rangeland, Pasture, and Forages; Soil Resource Management; Veterinary, Medical, and Urban Entomology; and Water Quality and Management.
The BARC houses the Abraham Lincoln Building of the National Agricultural Library.
The center's Harvest for the Hungry program donates about 75,000 pounds of fruits and vegetables each year for distribution to local charities, in conjunction with volunteers from the community who do much of the labor of harvesting.
Tours are available by reservation.
Each February, BARC hosts the Washington Birthday Marathon, the eighth oldest marathon in the United States.
