it carried on by agents in the counties who could have immediate and
continuous contact with individual farmers and groups of farmers.
As the work of the county agents in the South grew more permanent they
found that it was more efficient if they worked with and through local
groups of farmers, and community agricultural clubs were quite widely
organized, but no strong county federation was developed, except in West
Virginia, where the local clubs formed a county organization which was
called a Farm Bureau. The term Farm Bureau originated in Broome County,
New York, in 1911, when the first county agent in that state was
employed by the Binghamton Chamber of Commerce, the Lackawanna Railroad,
and the U. S. Department of Agriculture. As the number of county agents
rapidly increased in the northern states it soon became apparent that if
their work was to be of the greatest service to the farmers for whose
benefit they worked, that it should be supported and managed by the
farmers themselves rather than by business interests. The Farm Bureau
Association, composed of farmers throughout a county, soon came to be a
prerequisite to the placing of an agricultural agent in a county, and
with the passage of the Smith-Lever Act and of state legislation
accepting its provisions and appropriating state funds contingent upon
similar appropriations by the counties, this became the usual procedure.
The county farm bureau association cooperates with the state college of
agriculture and the U. S. Department of Agriculture in the employment of
the county agent, and the annual membership fees together with county
appropriations pay the expenses of the work other than salary. The
affairs of the farm bureau association are in the hands of the usual
officers and executive committee, who report to an annual meeting of the
membership. Further than this the method of organization varies in
different states. In most of the northern and western states there is a
local committee in each community which arranges for the demonstrations
and meetings to be held by the county agent, and there is no further
organization of the local membership, but in a few states definite local
organizations or community clubs with officers and regular meetings
have developed. In either case, however, the unit of local organization
and interest in the work of the farm bureau is usually the community,
although its executive administration is on a county basis.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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