This paper proposes to explore the codification of agricultural expertise within the context of the late Ottoman Empire. In particular, it aims to demonstrate what it meant for the Ottoman state to deem the transmission of agricultural knowledge a matter for government-sponsored schools and textbooks rather than an expertise to be passed down within the context of the local community. The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries marked a period in which many Ottoman bureaucrats embraced a discourse of progress and modernity, the practical implementation of which involved, among other things, encouraging the spread of new technologies and the increased institutionalization of knowledge transmission within certain fields. One such field was agriculture. Efforts at development throughout the empire often included the establishment of institutions for agricultural education both within Anatolia proper and throughout the empire's provinces. These were projects aimed at all members of agrarian society: men, women, and children, each with their specific role to play in making farming a more productive and profitable enterprise. Such increased productivity was certainly in the state's interest as it promised greater revenues. Using textbooks authored by a member of the 1914 Ottoman Parliament, an agronomist who served as head of the Agricultural Department, this paper proposes to examine the practical mechanics of how agriculture was packaged as a science to be taught in institutions of the state. In this paper, I address what it meant for the reproduction of knowledge to be removed from a local context in which it would have been conveyed by local experts to the classroom of the state. I examine the specific roles delineated for women, children and men in these circumstances. Furthermore, the paper explicates what types of knowledge were deemed new and scientific and how the process of replacing what was deemed antiquated knowledge with these modern technologies and techniques provided opportunities for the state to insert itself more directly into farmers' lives. Like other states that sought to increase revenue through higher agricultural productivity, the Ottomans grappled with how to reap the abundance and prosperity promised by mechanized agriculture while simultaneously coping with its high cost. Subsidizing education that encouraged the application of techniques and practices deemed scientific represented, at least for policy makers, one step towards realizing this goal of increased productivity.