The Agricultural Chemicals School began in 1949 as the Insecticide and Fungicide Short Course, a three-day seminar led by the North Carolina State College Departments of Plant Pathology and Entomology. The name was changed to the Pesticide School the following year, and the course was shortened to two days. The 1950 program billed the School as "planned to bring to the Dealers of [pesticides] the latest information on new materials on the market....This School will furnish many of the ANSWERS which your CUSTOMERS are expecting of YOU." By the late 1950s the School expanded its focus to include material of interest to "county extension agents, vocational instructors, [and] farm supervisors." From 1954 the School was held in the Erdahl-Cloyd Student Union on the campus of North Carolina State University.

In 1969 the program became the Pesticide-Fertilizer School, and the meeting was held in the Sir Walter Hotel in downtown Raleigh. The name changed again in 1971, this time to the Agricultural Chemicals School. Starting in 1977, the meeting moved to the then-new McKimmon Center on the campus of North Carolina State University, where it has been held ever since. The School is currently called the Crop Protection School and is run jointly by the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and the Office of Professional Development, a unit of Continuing & Professional Education. These records do not denote when the current designation took hold. The focus of the School today remains much the same as when it started, to "present information on the effectiveness, safe application, and proper use of agricultural chemicals for the benefit of dealers, applicators, formulators, manufacturers, county Extension agents, farm superintendents, vocational agriculture teachers, and other agricultural leaders."