The essential public good: why agricultural data access is vital for national resilience

“ But farmers make the bravest men, and the stoutest soldiers. Their gain is the most honest, the most stable, and least exposed to envy. Those who exercise the art of agriculture, are of all others least addicted to evil thoughts.”
Our author then proceeds to his rules, many of which are sufficiently obvious. Thus, he advises, that when one is about to purchase a farm, he should examine if the climate, soil, and exposure be good: he should see that it can be easily supplied with plenty of water,—that it lies in the neighbourhood of a town,—and near a navigable river, or the sea. ”

“ But with our own eyes we may perceive how much climate affects agriculture. The humidity or dryness of soils, their natural or acquired heat or cold, the prevailing winds, the quantity of rain, the snows, the dews, all affect the planter of the seed and the tiller of the ground ”

“ A generation ago home-making and farming were occupations that anyone with a mediocre intelligence and a reasonable degree of industry was considered sufficiently equipped for. But today these two avocations occupy a secure and increasingly important place among the learned professions.
Agriculture, “dignified by the ages, as old well-nigh as the green earth itself,” has become a scientific profession alluring to men and women of brains and culture, who quickly become enthralled by its ever-expanding and fascinating possibilities. ”

“ The land is generally worked by farmers, hired for that purpose, or by renters on short leases; which in neither case betters the condition of the soil; the one having no interest in improvements, and the other too small a one to justify any expense in making them.
4. A good rotation system, adapted to the soil and climate, is not absolutely unknown, and may be found even in whole districts (as in French Flanders) but much too rarely. We have seen wheat and fallows alternately for years; and wheat, rye, hemp, and rye, and many others equally ridiculous. ”

“ The result is, that in the older States the farmer is compelled to look for his profits to raising the products that will not bear transportation, either because they are perishable, as milk, or because they are too bulky, as hay. He must depend upon the near-by market, and supply it with what the farmers of the West can not send it. ”

“ Agriculture has perhaps been slow to feel the current of the new wine as it flows from the wine press of fast-growing industrial and social need. But the least hopeful of us can, I am sure, already see signs of a vast awakening. The farm, as well as the pulpit, the bar, the schoolroom, the shop, the counting-room, is breathing in the new idea that knowledge and training can be made of use to every man. ”

“ It is the problem of the man behind the plow. It is he that is the center of interest. His business, his success, his manhood, his family, his environment, his education, his future—these constitute the problem of the farm. Half our people make their living from the brown soil. In virtue, in intelligence, in real worth, this half compare favorably with the other half who saw wood, and shovel sand, and pull throttles, and prepare briefs, and write sermons. The business of agriculture provides directly for the material welfare of nearly forty millions of our people. ”

“ He cannot be blind to their dominance. They insist on recognition. They are jealous masters and good servants. Nature serves only the man who obeys her. To obey he must know. The truth shall make him free. How to secure larger crops of better products at less cost and still maintain soil fertility, is the first demand of modern agriculture, and its solution depends in large measure upon education.
But education does not stop here. The farmer is also a seller as well as a producer. He is a business man. He is manager of an industry. ”

“ As agriculture became a business, he became a business man. As agricultural science began to contribute to the art of farming, he studied applied science. As industrial education developed, he founded and patronized institutions for agricultural education. As alertness and enterprise began to be indispensable in commercial activity, he grew alert and enterprising. ”

“ However, our chief interest is, perhaps, in those institutions that are formed purposely and especially for agricultural education and which are usually supported out of public funds. There are three great fields of endeavor in which these institutions are working. The first step is to know—to know the truth. So in agriculture we must know. Know what? Know how nature works. So the man of science studies the soil and finds out what plant-food it contains, how the water acts in it, what heat and air do, and the inter-relation of all these elements. ”

“ The fundamental change that is taking place is the gradual adoption of the new agriculture. "Book-farmin'" is still decried, and many "perfessers" have a rocky road to travel in their attempts to guide the masses through the labyrinth of scientific knowledge that has been constructed during the last decade or two. This difficulty has not been wholly the farmer's fault—the scientist would often have been more persuasive had his wings been clipped. ”

“ Agriculture cannot attain its highest rank unless the men engaged in it believe in it most profoundly. They must believe that a man can make money in farming. They must love the farm life and surroundings. They must believe that the best days of agriculture are ahead of us, not behind us. They must believe that men can find in agriculture a chance to use brains and to develop talents and to utilize education. Agricultural education rests on this faith. Give us a state filled with such farmers and we can guarantee a strong system of agricultural education. ”

“ We may next discuss as briefly as possible the methods by which agricultural education may be advanced. We may not consider all of them, but rather attend only to some of those agencies that seem of peculiar interest just at this time.
There is one underlying requisite of successful agricultural education that is all-important. It is faith in agriculture. Any man to succeed grandly must have absolute faith in his business. So the farmer must believe in agriculture. ”

“ But the seeds of education cannot grow in a soil barren of the richness of sentiment for and [Pg 84] confidence in the farm. Our agricultural colleges have been criticized because they have graduated so few farmers. But the fault is not all with the colleges. The farmers also are to blame. They have not had faith enough in the farm to advise young men to go to college to prepare for farming. They admit the value of education for the law, for building railroads, but not for farming. ”

“ So we have research as the first term in agricultural education. The institutions of research are our [Pg 86] experiment stations and United States Department of Agriculture. Their work may be likened to the plowing of the field. They strive to know how nature works, and how man can make use of her laws in the growing of plant and animal.
The next thing is to teach. The farmer too must know. Knowledge confined to the scientist has little practical use. It is the farmer who can use it. Moreover, new teachers must be trained, new experimenters equipped, and leaders in every direction prepared. ”

“ The United States Department of Agriculture is a dam, it has been gathering and has stored up the knowledge—the water. The colleges of agriculture are the main channels for reaching the various parts of the country; but so long as the water is back of the dam it is doing no good; so long as it remains in the main channels it is accomplishing nothing. What is needed is to get the water to the grass roots, or, in other words, our purpose is to get the information to the actual farmer—the man behind the plow. ”

“ Our plan is to bring home to the farmer the best method that has been determined by the agricultural college and experiment station. We want to get the best results from year to year and at the same time build up the soil. This can be done and this is scientific farming. This is what the whole world needs. The colleges of agriculture and experiment stations have gathered a vast fund of knowledge, and if this were put into practical operation it would double the yield of our farms within a few years and give us a large surplus for export and bring money into the country. ”

“ The intelligence of the American people, the spirit of the age demands that we go forward to attain the highest and best and it is our duty to help to this end.
Denmark, a generation or two ago, was in poverty and distress, its people were crowding into the cities. The government saw something must be done to improve conditions. It wisely decided that agriculture must be encouraged, so it commenced to teach agriculture in the schools. It had its agricultural colleges strengthened, it sent men out among the people as traveling schoolmasters, visiting one community after another. ”

“ With this inevitable doom staring them in the face, is it any wonder that so many of the youth of our land flock to the cities with the hope of seeking some occupation other than farming? The above conditions, together with the seemingly higher civilization of the city folk, I claim, are largely responsible for this. But be this as it may, in the light of what has been accomplished, I see for us a very bright star of hope in the education of two-thirds of the brightest and best of our youth in scientific agriculture. ”

“ Hartt's interesting clinic over a decadent hill-town, the suggestive fast-day proclamation of Governor Rollins of New Hampshire a few years ago, the marvelous development of agricultural education, the renewed study of the rural school, the widespread and growing delight in country life, have all aroused an interest in and presage a new attention to rural conditions. This is well. The sociologist can hardly afford to omit the rural classes from the scope of his study, especially if he desires to investigate the practical phases of his subject. ”

“ As Miss Stearns told us yesterday, there is less of drudgery in farm life today than there was thirty years ago, and children have more time for study and reading; but they need direction and assistance.
The consensus of opinion among writers on rural sociology is that the great need of the people of the country is more education; education that will make farming more scientific and efficient, and less fatiguing, education that will help boys and girls to find amusement in the life about them; education that will guide that passion for nature which every normal child possesses. ”

“ The study of the landscape of the near-by country, the study of the streams, the study of the soils, studies that have to do with the location of homes, of villages, the study of the weather, of the common plants, of domestic animals—all of these things will give the child a better start in education, a better comprehension of the life he is to live, a better idea of the business of farming, a better notion about the importance of agriculture, and will tend to fit him better for future life either on the farm or anywhere else, than could any amount of the old-fashioned book knowledge. ”

“ The next important need is good roads, and the third is scientific agriculture. Bringing these improvements about will revolutionize conditions. It will raise agriculture to the first place and the highest place in the estimation of the people. It will be the strongest possible magnet to hold the girl and the boy to the farm home. It will make agriculture more pleasant, more profitable and in every way a more desirable vocation. ”

“ If experiment is to be likened to plowing, the work of the schools may be compared to sowing and cultivating.
Agricultural colleges have been in existence in America almost fifty years. Their careers have been both inspiring and disappointing. They have had to train their own teachers, create a body of knowledge, break down the bars of educational prejudice. ”

“ The latest bulletin of the best agricultural institution is scarcely more instructive or helpful than a study of the “forty centuries of agriculture” included in the experience of these skilled and laborious people of the Orient.
The soil is a living thing, and must receive the treatment due to all organic and vital beings from which we expect service or tribute. The first requisite is that the individual man learn with what manner of soil he is dealing. There is now an agricultural college or experiment station within the reach of every farmer in the country. ”

“ But suppose that no young men came forward to take agricultural studies, the new education would still tell powerfully on agriculture. Think you that we can send out year after year—as we did last year—a hundred graduates from all our various departments, whose powers of observation have been trained and whose real knowledge of subjects bearing on agriculture has been extended by close study in Botany, Animal Physiology, Geology, and Chemistry, without its telling ultimately on the progress of agriculture? ”

“ But the change for the better has been so marked that all agricultural educators are extremely optimistic.
One of the most difficult and most important phases of agricultural education is that of a secondary grade. The great proportion of educated farmers will probably be trained for their business in secondary schools. This problem is being approached from many standpoints. The University of Minnesota established, some fourteen years ago, a school of agriculture, which now enrols several hundred [Pg 189] pupils of both sexes. ”

“ What the townborn need is secondary education which will fit them for the work they are to do. If our farmborn are to be efficient, they must have centralized schools taught by teachers who have selected teaching as their life work and are paid accordingly, and thus be able to acquire in the open country a secondary education that will enable them to see clearly the reason why they should plow, or sow or feed. ”

“ I do not refer to the agricultural department, which it has in common with many colleges, nor to the special short agricultural course of three months in the winter, intended to give farmers’ boys, who enter it without examination or other connection with the University, the most available agricultural information in the briefest time, the intention being not to educate boys away from a taste for farming but to make them better farmers. The students must be not less than sixteen years old, and have a common-school education. ”

“ The last point is of great importance because of the comparative absence in country communities of opportunity near at hand for good high-school training.
Agricultural education is distinctively technical, not in the restricted sense of mere technique, or even of applied science, but in the sense that it must be frankly vocational. It has to do with the preparation of men and women for the business of farming and for life in the rural community. ”

“ For today agricultural education is becoming organized, the subjects of study are well planned, and competent men are teaching and experimenting. The disappointment is twofold. They have not [Pg 87] graduated as many farmers as they should have. This is due not wholly to wrong notions in the colleges. It is, as suggested before, partly due to the lack of faith in agriculture on the part of the farmers themselves. But the colleges are in part to blame. Many of them have not been in close touch with the farmers. They have often been out of sympathy with the interests of the farmers. ”

“ A most suggestive phase of agricultural education is college extension work. University extension has had a rather meteoric career in this country, in so far as it has been connected with educational institutions; although the extension idea is spreading rapidly and is being worked out through home study and correspondence courses of all sorts. But I think there is scarcely any field in which the real college extension idea is today being more successfully applied than in agriculture. ”

“ The farmers themselves. Assuming that our agricultural colleges are designed, among other functions, to train men and women to become influential farmers, no argument is necessary to show how studies in rural social science may help qualify these students for genuine leadership of their class of toilers. On the other hand, it may be remarked that no subjects will better lend themselves to college extension work than those named above. Lectures and lecture courses for granges, farmers' clubs, farmers' institutes, etc., on such themes would arouse the greatest interest. ”

“ Other educational agencies, such as the agricultural colleges and experiment stations, have profited by institutes. No one thing has done more than the institutes to popularize agricultural education, to stir up interest in the colleges, to make the farmers feel in touch with the scientists.
Farmers' institutes are a phase of university extension, and it is as a part of the extension [Pg 103] movement that they are bound to increase in value and importance. ”

“ Agricultural college professors, and agricultural experimenters have talked of the relations of science to practical farming. The farmers have come to depend upon the institute as a means for gaining up-to-date information.
And if institutes have informed, they have also done what is still better—they have inspired. They have gone into many a dormant farm community and awakened the whole neighborhood to a quicker life. They have started discussions, set men thinking, brought in a breath of fresh air. They have given to many a farmer an opportunity for self-development as a ready speaker. ”

“ Some of the States are providing for traveling instructors and supervisors in agriculture, following the policy successfully adopted in the most enlightened countries of Europe, thus raising the level of agricultural practice and educating the millions who are beyond the reach of the institutions where formal instruction is given to the young. It is imperative that we reach the older people, and the large percentage of the children of the farm who never get beyond the district school, if we are in earnest in the work we have undertaken. ”

“ One powerful means of agricultural education is the farmers' organization or association. All our dairy, horticultural, poultry, and live-stock associations are great educators. So of an organization like the Grange, its chief work is education. It brings mind in contact with mind; it gives chance for discussion and interchange of ideas; it trains in power of expression; it teaches the virtue of co-operation. Farmers blunder when they fail to encourage organization. Sometimes, out of foolish notions of independence, they neglect to unite their forces. ”

“ Mingle with educational men and women, search the educational periodicals and programs, scan the educational books, visit the normal colleges; and I think you will discover that something like this is happening in the educational world: The content of education is being adapted to meet the needs of all the classes and the masses. The method of education is being adapted to the individual. The result is that education is being universalized, socialized, democratized. ”

“ But in the farm problem we cannot afford to ignore the economic and sociological phases. While it may be true that the practical success [Pg 217] of the individual farmer depends largely upon his business sense and his technical education, it is folly to hope that the success of agriculture as an industry and the influence of farmers as a class can be based solely upon the ability of each farmer to raise a big crop and to sell it to advantage. ”

“ When, however, we turn to those public educational agencies that are intended to assist in the solution of the farm problem, we discover that they are giving slight attention to the social side of the question. An examination of the catalogues of the agricultural colleges, whether separate institutions or colleges of state universities, reveals the fact that, beyond elementary work in economics, in civics, and occasionally in sociology, little opportunity is given students to study the farm question from its social standpoint. ”

“ Skilled artisans are large consumers of choice meats, fruits, and vegetables. To grow these high-grade products means skill, and skill means training, and training in the large sense means education.
The need for agricultural education, is, then, a real and vital one. It is pressed upon us by economic and social conditions. It is in line with the movement of the age.
In discussing agricultural education, we must not forget that the farmer is also a citizen and a man. He should be an intelligent citizen, and should therefore study questions of government. ”

“ The country church and its career will interest him fully as much as does the latest successful device for tying milch cows in the stable. He will want to get at the kernel of the political questions that confront agriculture [Pg 202] just as fully and thoroughly as he wishes to master the formulae for commercial fertilizers. No man will have acquired an adequate agricultural education who has not been trained in rural social science, and who does not recognize the bearing of this wide field of thought upon the business of farming as well as upon American destiny. ”

“ Farmers are a class among classes. As an industry, agriculture has relations to other industries. It is subject to economic laws. It involves something more than growing and selling. The nature of the market, railroad rates, effects of the tariff and of taxation, are questions vital to agriculture. So with the farmers socially considered. Their opportunities for social life, their school facilities, their church privileges, their associations and organizations—all these are important matters. So agricultural education will not fail to call attention to these larger questions. ”

“ The college should, as far as possible, become the leader in the whole movement for solving the farm problem.
The farm home has not come in for its share of attention in existing schemes of agricultural education. The kitchen and the dining-room have as much to gain from science as have the dairy and the orchard. The inspiration of vocational knowledge must be the possession of her who is the entrepreneur of the family, the home-maker. ”

“ We shall advance the cause of education among ourselves and for our children, by all just means within our power. We especially advocate for our agricultural and industrial colleges that practical agriculture, domestic science, and all the arts which adorn the home be taught in their courses of study. ”

“ American agriculture is the largest positive contributor to our Nation's net trade balance, generating 10 percent of our exports and millions of American jobs. America's farmers and ranchers provide a safe and plentiful domestic food supply, which is vital to our national security. Moreover, they safeguard our sustainable resource base for future generations. As my Administration fights for better trade deals, agriculture will be an important consideration so that its significant contributions will only increase in the years ahead. ”