This paper will explore the contestations involved in the establishment of an agricultural school in Selemiye, Syria during the late Ottoman period and the subsequent contribution of the school and its students to shaping the environment and agricultural practice in the region. The paper will draw on archival sources from the Ottoman archives and the Ministère des Affaires Étrangères archives as well as periodicals from both the Ottoman and Mandate periods to trace the conflict that erupted over funding for the school’s initial founding and demonstrate the transitions the school underwent in the wake of World War I under the French Mandate. Disseminating knowledge about emerging technologies through institutionalized agricultural education was a priority for Ottoman administrators. In addition to classes in agriculture that were incorporated into the Ottoman Empire’s elementary, middle and high schools, in certain regions deemed particularly crucial to agricultural prosperity, means were sought to establish schools dedicated exclusively to agricultural education. However, as the case of the Selemiye agricultural school demonstrates the process of establishing these institutions could be contentious. This paper’s examination of the circumstances surrounding the Selemiye agricultural school’s establishment will illuminate how different groups within the local society perceived and valued the purported benefits of agricultural education. It will analyze how this resistance was interpreted by Ottoman officials and this interpretation’s divergence from the reasons given for opposition to the project. The paper will also demonstrate how local groups adopted the state’s own language of reform to justify and defend their positions critical of the school. Despite this contentious beginning, the school continued and, in the aftermath of World War I, was singled out by French officials as one of the only schools that would continue to provide agricultural education under the mandate. While its students undertook a number of projects, by the early 1930s the school had been shut down—a situation which provoked nationalist critique and frustration. Tracing the history of the Selemiye agricultural school from its establishment in the late Ottoman period through the changes it underwent during the mandate demonstrates on the one hand continuities in the insistence on institutionalizing agricultural education, particularly from the perspective of state officials and certain landowners, while also providing insight into how local actors negotiated these changing political structures.