Farmers Helping Farmers
The Rise of the Farm and Home Bureaus, 1914-1935
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4155499 |
|---|---|
| Authors | J L Anderson (0000-0003-2693-5800, Mount Royal University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2017 |
| Volume | 104 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 524-524 |
| Publication date | 2017-09-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of American History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-8723 • E-ISSN: 1945-2314 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/jahist/jax248 |
| OpenAlex | W2750258409 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
The story of the county farm and home bureaus has often been obscured by an emphasis on the political activities of the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) and how it influenced farm policy and exercised control over the countryside. For Nancy K. Berlage this traditional focus on the AFBF ignores how improvement-minded rural people organized at the local level and ultimately shaped the national organization. Farm and home bureaus reflected the desires of rural people to sustain communities in an era of industrialization and urbanization through science, technology, and modern business practices. Berlage contends that the collaboration of the local bureaus was more important than the land-grant schools and experiment stations in connecting farmers with science and technology. In Farmers Helping Farmers rural modernism was a grassroots project. Bureau members agreed that the best way to improve conditions on the farm was to increase profits through new techniques such as soil testing and fertilization, cooperative marketing, bovine tuberculosis testing, and record keeping. While the evidence is incomplete on the issue of who created and belonged to these organizations, the author persuasively demonstrates that membership was widespread and included more than just elites. These early bureaus were also sites of gender conflict. Some women favored a separate sphere that would provide leadership opportunities and spaces to articulate their distinct interests. Others hoped to claim a position for women as farm producers to legitimize the role that they already performed. Berlage concludes that many women found use in maneuvering back and forth and among the gendered spaces within farm and home bureaus
Agriculture · Business · Economic growth · Economics · Family farm · Geography · Grassroots · Industrialisation · Political science · Politics · Position (finance · Urbanization · American Environmental and Regional History · American History and Culture · Finance · Law
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,43 |
| Citation span | 2019 - 2025 (7) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 3 |