1890 Institutions' Extension Program and Rural Development

Agroforestry Systems, 2016

Agroforestry is a sustainable land-use system that involves an intentional integration and management of trees, crops, and/or livestock in a single management unit. Well managed agroforestry systems offer more economical, environmental, and social benefits compared to monocultures of its components. Continuous research, education, and extension efforts are necessary to promote agroforestry practices. Agroforestry research, education, and extension activities ongoing at the 1890 universities located in the South and the Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund, Epes, Alabama are presented in this article. Additionally, some of the funding support received by these institutions to conduct agroforestry activities, and the involvement of professionals, farmers, landowners, and students in these activities are discussed.

2015

These comments discuss the presentations by Christy, Wenner, and Dassie ("A Microen-

2015

There is a growing concern among leaders the theoretical issues relating to the seg-of our nation about the impending human mented labor markets of black agricultural capital shortage in agriculture. The United economists and the black land-grant insti-States, a nation that leads the world in the tutions. production of agricultural products, is seri-ously threatened by deepening shortages of SUPPLY/DEMAND RELATIONSHIPS OF highly qualified scientists, managers, and AGRICULTURAL SCIENTISTS technical professionals-including agricul- An examination of the supply/demand re-tural economists. The U.S. agricultural sys- lationships of agricultural scientists reveals tem, which contributes some 20 percent to that there is growing evidences of deficits of the nation's gross national product, 23 per- college-educated agricultural scientists. Sur-cent to the nation's employment, and 19oulter and Stanton (1980 1983) percent of export earnings, increasingly in- the Resident Instruction ...

Journal of Southern Agricultural …, 2003

The land-grant university was founded to promote equality in American society by educating the common man, developing knowledge to solve problems, and by disseminating that knowledge to all who need it. The Cooperative Extension Service (CES) offers research based information and non-formal education to the public, and serves as a link between the universities' researchers and the citizen: However, some in the population are not benefiting from the land-grant system. The focus of this study was to describe the differences between Oklahoma wheat producers who knew about extension programs and those who did not know about extension programs. The theoretical framework for the study was Rogers' model for the diffusion of innovation. The hypothesis was that those who did not know about extension programs would fit the profile of laggards/late adopters described in the literature. The findings of the study strongly supported the hypothesis and implied that the university must become more proactive in reaching this group. The findings also illustrate a need for more research in this area to better understand and serve all of the land-grant university's stakeholders.

Many individuals deserve thanks for the guidance, support, and insight they gave during the process of creating this thesis. Most proximate among them are my committee chair, Kathleen Hilliard, and my committee members, Julie Courtwright and Dirk Deam. Dr. Hilliard allowed me to investigate other historians' work on the land-grant colleges in one seminar and, even before formally making her my graduate adviser, suggested further reading and offered feedback on my anticipated but unrefined outline. For one of Dr. Courtwright's classes I pursed one of the most sweeping tangents to the land-grant idea: the Jeffersonian ideology's role in the Louisiana Purchase, an idea which does not appear in this document but was useful in that, through that essay, I began to get an idea of ways that I could tighten my project. Dr. Deam's role in this thesis has been the longest. As a double-major undergraduate in History and Political Science at Iowa State, I took nine courses-nearly enough credits for the major-with him. Taking Constitutional Law as a sophomore conditioned a precise mode of thinking that I have tried to use since necessity forced me to learn it. Researching and writing a senior thesis under his supervision led me to believe I should pursue graduate school rather than law school. And in his summer class on environmental politics, in which the environment serves as a trope for the care with which a politician should cultivate the public world, I had my first exposure to the landgrant idea and its misappropriation, which occurred via a chapter in one of Wendell Berry's books-"Jefferson, Morrill, and the Upper Crust." Additionally, I thank my friends, who always listened to my idea of the week and who kept me focused on the bigger, more important picture; my colleagues in the Department of History's graduate program, who challenged me in seminar and taught me a great deal about reading vi ABSTRACT The Morrill Act of 1862, a piece of federal legislation enacted a century and a half ago, lives on today. That law allocated thousands of acres of federal land to state governments, based on the size of their congressional delegations, so they could establish colleges of agriculture and the mechanic arts and give a college education, liberal and practical, to students who could not otherwise afford one. The Morrill Act lives on because the "land-grant colleges" it endowed with financial resources still exist today, operating on billion-dollar budgets and enrolling tens of thousands of students. Further, at least at Iowa State University, each incoming president's inaugural address has involved an explanation of the land-grant idea. In the past three decades, that explanation has devolved from the broad view, held for a century, that land-grant colleges should prepare their students to be productive economically and politically, that they should educate them to be competent engineers and agriculturists as well as civic-minded people capable of acting not just in someone's private interest, but in their community's-their polity's-public interest. The latest presidents of Iowa State have, since the 1980s, put forward an explanation of the land-grant idea that places economic values, rather than political values, at the center of the university's existence. The work of historians of agriculture and the land-grant colleges has not been much better, the former paying little attention to the landgrant colleges and the latter more often than not failing to see the larger context in which the colleges were created and have existed. This thesis investigates the ideology that played a role in Iowa State University's creation in the late 1850s and early 1860s as the Iowa State Agricultural College and Model Farm. In the mid-to late 1850s, acting out of a concern for declining soil fertility (or the potential for it), the vii Iowa State Agricultural Society formulated an ideology of sustainable land use, scientific investigation of farming techniques, and the equal dignity of labor (agricultural and mechanical work) with the more esteemed professions. The Society turned to a number of educational institutions, including annual fairs, agricultural periodicals, seed distribution programs by the federal government, township-level farmers' clubs, the state geological survey, and the state agricultural college, chartered in 1858, before the Morrill Act's passage. The author undertook this thesis because he believes that, if Iowa State's administration are going to invoke the history of the Morrill Act to rationalize their actions, they ought to know what that history is.

Striving for Grassroots Engagement and Social Justice through Cooperative Extension, 2022

Historians have portrayed the formative period of agricultural extension work in the United States as a search for the best method of convincing farmers to change their farming practices in order to improve agricultural efficiency, productivity, and profitability. However, one of the key leaders in extension's formative period, Cornell University's Liberty Hyde Bailey, articulated a different vision of extension's central purpose and promise. Drawing on his writings during the years in which he led the development of Cornell's extension program (1894Cornell's extension program ( -1902

The Farmers’ Improvement Society and the Women’s Barnyard Auxiliary of Texas: African American Community Building in the Progressive Era, 2016

Historians have brought attention to African American women's contributions to planning, specifically as it relates to housing and social service program delivery. This article builds upon that scholarship by adding the work of the Farmers' Improvement Society and its Women's Barnyard Auxiliary, African American mutual aid groups active and founded during the Progressive Era. This article foregrounds the contributions of this racial uplift group to planning practice and scholarship. Second, the article sheds light on the unique approach to planning rural, poor mutual aid groups employed. Finally, this article complicates popular assumptions about similar Progressive Era, ''Uplift Movement'' groups.

American Journal of Alternative Agriculture, 2003

This paper examines what land grant colleges of agriculture were designed to be and do and, using their published mission statements, discusses what they now claim to be and do. Teaching ‘such branches of learning as are related to the agriculture and the mechanic arts’ and ‘to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes’ is what land grant colleges were designed to do; it is the land grant mission. The paper asks whether these things are what land grant colleges of agriculture do now. The original mission has been amended with new challenges that must be met in a time of declining public support for higher education, societal distrust of science and a negative public perception of agricultural technology, in a culture that wants cheap food. The agricultural community, including colleges of agriculture, has been slow to accept the challenges and opportunities inherent in the questions agriculture now faces. Agriculture remains an essential human activity in...

Journal of Planning History, 2016

Historians have brought attention to African-American women’s contributions to planning including housing and social service program delivery. This article builds upon that scholarship by adding the work of the Farmers’ Improvement Society and its Women’s Barnyard Auxiliary, both of which were Progressive-era African American mutual aid groups. This article explores the potential importance of these organizations to planning practice and scholarship; sheds light on the unique approach to planning employed by poor and rural people in mutual aid groups; and challenges popular assumptions about similar Progressive Era, “Uplift Movement” groups.