These farms help forensic students study decomposition in different situations, meaning that they can do more of that neat deductive stuff you see on CSI where they tell you how long ago the victim was murdered
During episode #6.17 of Fox's television series Bones entitled "The Feet on the Beach", medical anthropologist Dr. Temperance Brennan and her partner FBI Special Agent Seeley Booth visit a fictional body farm at the University of Hogansburg, New York.