Mariano Marcos State University-College of Agriculture, Food and Sustainable Development-Dingras

Mariano Marcos State University was established on 6 January 1978 by Presidential Decree No. 1279, which merged the Mariano Marcos Memorial College of Science and Technology at Batac with the Northern Luzon State College at Laoag City, and integrated the college departments of the Ilocos Norte Agricultural College and the Ilocos Norte College of Arts and Trades. Its mandate covers advanced instruction in the arts, the agricultural and natural sciences, and technological and professional fields. The College of Agriculture, Food and Sustainable Development sits at Dingras, one of the campuses the Mariano Marcos Memorial College of Science and Technology already operated before the 1978 merger. Agricultural instruction in the province also came into the university through the Ilocos Norte Agricultural College, whose college departments the decree integrated. Dingras lies inland in the Laoag River valley, in the agricultural heart of Ilocos Norte, which is why the university's agriculture and food programmes are concentrated there rather than at Batac or on the coast.