Ag History Through LIFE's Lens

Last Monday marked 73 years since LIFE magazine debuted. That's 73 years of powerful images that pull us in, tell a story and convey history.

But did you know that LIFE has made its archives available through Google Image Search? A year into the effort, the LIFE Photo Archive is well on its way to the 10 million images it expects to encompass. With 97% of the photos never published before, it delivers page after page of surprises, along with the famous and familiar.

Of course, the collection covers as many topics as LIFE itself, with pics stretching as far back as the 1750s, but I wanted to see how it captured agricultural history.

Turns out, it does so pretty well.

Meet yesterday's farmers. Step back in time to a husking bee. Examine irrigation methods. Inspect pigs of all stripes. Kick the tires on a few tractors.

See the rugged beauty of ranches in the American West. Glimpse gen-u-ine cowboys doing their thing. Check out how agricultural equipment has changed through the years, even how stilts have been used to get fruit pickers to the fruit.

Or focus your attention on a specific decade to explore images of U.S. agriculture from the 1930s, '40s, '50s or '60s.

Searching is easy -- enter words or phrases, throw in a decade if you'd like (e.g., 1950s) -- and you're off.

Not every photo has labels assigned, and the quality of descriptive information varies, but for casual exploration, it's a breeze, not to mention fascinating.

Note the rules, though. All pics are labeled "For personal non-commercial use only," which means you can use them under those limited circumstances but copyright and ownership remains with Time, Inc. More detailed permissions information is lacking, so take care when using these images, even the old ones. I doubt there's much if anything in the public domain here.

Posted by Mary Ann Leonard

Added to Art, Artifacts and Photos and History of Agriculture and Rural Life on December 01, 2009 | Permalink

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USDA on Flickr, Thanks to DCPL (and Many of You)

The DC Public Library is helping to reveal USDA's history. As part of their first foray into Flickr, the library has posted photos from their E. B. Thompson collection, including historic shots of the Department of Agriculture.

The building pictured above, the old Department of Agriculture building, reached completion in 1868, under the watchful eye of its designer and builder, Adolf Cluss.

The National Mall was a very different place then. Even as late as the 1920s, the Ag Department claimed a huge chunk of land there, with gardens, greenhouses and buildings extending to what is now Constitution Avenue.

Then, in 1930, the imposing white structure that stands today as the Department's main administration building took its place across the street from the old ag building. The latter was razed shortly thereafter.

Today, hundreds of photos of the Department's buildings exist on Flickr, thanks to tourists and photographers the world over. But for more historical photos, NAL has quite an array here as part of the larger USDA History Collection.

We're still working on getting everything digitized -- such jobs take time and money -- but if you really need some old USDA pics -- and Flickr isn't cutting it -- come on down! Our Special Collections folks will be happy to show you what we've got.

Posted by Mary Ann Leonard

Added to Art, Artifacts and Photos and History of Agriculture on April 16, 2009 | Permalink

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Glad our photos could be of use! Hurrah for sharing :) Aaron Schmidt Digital Initiatives Librarian, DCPL http://dclibrarylabs.org/amino http://twitter.com/dcpl

Submitted by: Aaron on April 16, 2009 4:14 PM

Spaghetti Trees and Other Botanical Oddities

Would you believe me if I told you spaghetti grows on trees? Or that the dreaded spaghetti weevil threatens this year's harvest?

In 1957 hundreds of Brits fell for it when a popular BBC television program, Panorama, ended its April 1st broadcast with a short segment on Switzerland's bumper spaghetti crop that year. [Original BBC Video]

"The last two weeks of March are an anxious time for the spaghetti farmer," the announcer sonorously intoned, carrying off the joke with his gravitas and some well-crafted footage of the "harvest."

But the Brits who fell for the hoax were not easily convinced otherwise. Even after the BBC fessed up, calls continued to flood their switchboard. Operators delivered this standard reply to those wanting to grow their own spaghetti tree: "Place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best."

But spaghetti trees aren't the only botanical oddities out there. Apparently, the best work of plant breeders and geneticists has traditionally been revealed on April 1st, from the heat-generating plant, Solar Complexus Americanus, to the whistling carrot and this year's addition, the pinana, a vitamin-rich curiosity discovered by Britain's leading fruitologist Peter Colada.

And should you doubt the veracity of any of this, just remember that if it's on the Internet, it must be true.

Posted by Mary Ann Leonard

Added to Food and Nutrition and History of Agriculture and Plants and Crops on April 01, 2009 | Permalink

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terrific site this weblogs.nal.usda.gov terrific to see you have what I am actually looking for here and this this post is exactly what I am interested in. I shall be pleased to become a regular visitor :)

Submitted by: irrinnaFub on April 10, 2009 6:55 PM

Submitted by: Robert on April 11, 2009 12:56 PM

All the Ag That's Fit to Print

A little over year ago the New York Times officially opened up a good chunk of its Web site to all comers. That's free articles, no subscription required, back to 1987 and also pre-1922. No registration. No hiccups.

Now they've kicked it up a notch.

Sometime when I wasn't looking, they created Times Topics, a place where everything the paper has published on a subject -- whether news, photos, graphics, audio files or video clips -- is pulled together in one place. It's a veritable gateway to all the Times has done on over 14,000 subjects since 1981.

And I mention it here because that includes a deep archives related to ag -- 7,352 articles on agriculture in general, 2,483 articles on farmers, and 1,983 about livestock.

But the topics offered don't stop at the overarching. They also cover fertilizer (230 entries), irrigation (296 articles), and seeds (133 articles), along with corn (534), rice (274), wheat (127), organic food (399), biofuels (95), wind power (260) and veterinary medicine (201), among others.

And since each topics page lets you search within that topic, you can easily take a broad subject like agriculture and retrieve within it only those articles that mention insects, for instance.

Or, for greater precision, pick from the related terms under an article summary to get only stories dealing with both topics: the one you're on and the new one you just clicked.

They even offer RSS feeds and/or email alerts on each topic.

Of course, the New York Times might not be the only perspective you want on ag issues, but all in all, their Times Topics delivers a pretty cool resource for research or browsing. It also offers a great reminder that folks in this country's biggest city care about agriculture, too.

And so they should, since we all gotta eat.

Anyway, if you find any cool ag stuff on the Times site, let us know. Those of us on blogs gotta read, too.

Posted by Mary Ann Leonard

Added to History of Agriculture on October 22, 2008 | Permalink

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Thanks Mary Ann for the information. It is nice to know that folks from the big city care about agriculture. By the New York Time opening their archives so to speak, as you described, a lot can be learned about the importance of agriculture. It could even be monitored by decade and pre and post depression. By it having a deep archive related to ag with the 7,352 articles on agriculture in general, 2,483 articles on farmers, and 1,983 about livestock. There is much information to be learned and research. Then by them being so specific like fertilizer (230 entries), irrigation (296 articles), and seeds (133 articles), along with corn (534), rice (274), wheat (127), organic food (399), biofuels (95), wind power (260) and veterinary medicine (201), among others, each specific topic could be looked to indicate changes in the technology. Again thanks for the information, I'll just have to check it out!

Submitted by: Richard Dorman on November 17, 2008 8:46 PM

Submitted by: Mary Ann on November 20, 2008 9:56 AM

Submitted by: khbloh on April 10, 2009 6:54 PM

Cool Resource of the Week

O, Canada, I am impressed.

Those of us with an interest in agriculture and agricultural history are going to beat a path to your virtual door, thanks to the CBC Digital Archives.

You can get lost -- in a very good way -- in this deep and fascinating collection of television and radio clips, many from as far back as the 1940s (though most from 1960 on).

Hear a 1975 piece describing the pinch New Brunswick potato farmers feel between signing a contract to sell their crop to McCain's or take their chances on the open market.

Listen to the Kitstons from Nova Scotia talk about their 1987 move to organic farming when shunning pesticides was still considered radical.

Watch a profile of the Lamb family, whose homestead in Alberta in Western Canada had grown from 320 to 4,000 acres by 2000 and who understood well the business side -- and the risks -- of farming.

Or browse for more by category -- like agriculture, biotechnology or natural resources.

You can also take advantage of topic clusters offered on things like family farms, Canada's pork industry or genetically modified foods. These clusters bring together all the television and radio clips related to the topic that are available in the archives, so you can easily see how the issues or even the coverage itself shifted over the decades.

Finally, be sure to check out the sampling of National Farm Radio Forum broadcasts, a radio show that, in its own words, "got farmers talking."

The Farm Forum, as it came to be called, was the cutting-edge social networking of its day.

[The Forum] brought together groups of neighbours across rural Canada to listen to a weekly half-hour program on a single farm issue. Using accompanying printed study guides, the groups then discussed the broadcast and sent in a summary for follow-up on a subsequent show. Launched as an educational experiment by the CBC, along with the Canadian Association for Adult Education and the Canadian Federation of Agriculture, the show's motto was: "Read. Listen. Discuss. Act."

I am impressed.

Posted by Mary Ann Leonard

Added to History of Agriculture on July 18, 2008 | Permalink

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Pineapples in Paradise

What comes to mind when you think of Hawai'i? Paradise, right? Sun, sand, surf, warm breezes . . . I'm with you.

Okay, but what about Hawaiian food? My top three: pineapple, macadamia nuts, and poi. (Not that I've ever had poi, but too much television has undoubtedly shaped my perceptions.)

But Hawai'i is no longer paradise for the pineapple. That industry, so closely tied with many Americans' vision of Hawai'i, is showing signs of struggle.

In 2006, Del Monte planted its last crop of pineapple, citing the expense of growing in Hawai'i as the prime reason for shutting down operations after 90 years in the islands. Their departure leaves just two pineapple companies in the state, Dole Food Hawai'i and Maui Pineapple Co.

But last year, the latter shuttered its pineapple cannery, the last one in the U.S. The closure brought an end to an era for many Hawaiians, but the company remains, redirecting its attention to fresh fruit and juice in an effort to stay profitable.

The bottom line talks loudly. Growers in Thailand, the Philippines, Brazil, China, India and Costa Rica can produce the fruit more cheaply, thrusting these countries to the top of list of suppliers worldwide (XLS|41 KB). As a result, the pineapple might become more symbol than reality in Hawai'i. Only time -- and the market -- will tell.

But in honor of pineapple's long, deep history in Hawai'i, and in conjunction with Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, let me point you to a couple of unique resources from the Center for Oral History at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa that celebrate this fantastic fruit and the people who've brought it to us for decades.

The first, a short video clip (Quicktime | 4.4 MB), shows Venicia Guiala, a former pineapple field worker, demonstrating how she prepared for work in the hot, dusty pineapple fields. If you prefer, you can read the transcript, but I heartily recommend the video. Seeing Mrs. Guiala putting on her scarves, goggles and hat conveys more strongly than the words how difficult and uncomfortable that job must be.

The second provides a short introduction to the Center's oral history project on Women Workers in Hawai'i's Pineapple Industry, a combination of narrative and oral history excerpts.

But for a more contemporary twist on pineapple processing, check out this clip from YouTube. The music makes it an almost mesmerizingly peaceful experience. (Though I'd appreciate someone telling me what the song "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" has to do with peeling and coring pineapple.)

Finally, if you haven't given much thought to the role Asian-Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders have played and continue to play in our country's agricultural endeavors, jump over to NAL's site on Asian Pacific Americans in agriculture. Among many other things, you can learn from the resources there the unique niche Chinese immigrants filled in 1850s California; the key role Filipinos played in the formation of the United Farm Workers; and the impact of Alien Land Laws on Japanese immigrant farmers.

Aloha.

Posted by Mary Ann Leonard

Added to Biography and Food and Nutrition and History of Agriculture and Marketing and Trade on May 06, 2008 | Permalink

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Interesting blog post, Mary Ann. With Del Monte leaving Hawaii, the last two producers are Dole and Maui Pineapple. Maui Pine was the last to close their cannery on Maui, they did it earlier this year or late 2007. So all the fruit produced in Hawaii is for the fresh fruit market. The latest statistics shows that the acreage in pineapple in Hawaii is less than 14,000 acres and seed crops has now surpassed pineapple as the number crop in terms of farm gate values. Sugarcane, macadamia nuts and coffee round out the top 5. As for poi, taro, which is used to make poi, only 9% of the taro consumed in Hawaii is produced here. All of these statistics are from the NASS Hawaii state statistics. Doug Vincent College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources, University of Hawaii

Submitted by: Doug Vincent on May 20, 2008 9:23 AM

Submitted by: Mary Ann on May 20, 2008 9:29 AM

Submitted by: Welcome Books on June 11, 2008 2:50 PM

Happy Birthday, Abe!

Okay, so it is a bit odd to wish happy birthday to someone who has been dead for almost 143 years, but I have my reasons.

No, I'm not a Lincoln groupie, though I do live just a few miles from some key Lincoln sites -- the White House, Ford's Theatre, the Lincoln Memorial, and Lincoln's cottage among them. (The latter, Lincoln family's summer retreat, was declared a national monument in 2000, and is set to open to the public in just a few days.)

But besides my tourist connections to ol' Abe, I work in the Abraham Lincoln Building for a Library and a Department he established in 1862 (something I blogged about back in December). That, my friends, is the real reason for today's entry -- Abe's seminal role in making agriculture what it is today.

Interestingly enough though, Abe considered his own connection to things agricultural rather weak. Sure, he grew up on small farms in Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois, but in an address to the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society in 1859, he described his own agricultural knowledge with some self-deprecation:

I suppose it is not expected of me to impart to you much specific information on agriculture. You have no reason to believe and, do not believe, that I possess it; if that were what you seek in this address, any one of your own number or class would be more able to furnish it.

Nevertheless, Lincoln goes on to offer comments on improving agricultural productivity, increasing yield and maximizing labor. And he eloquently reflects upon the intellectual challenges agriculture brings, encouraging those present to pursue education:

No other human occupation opens so wide a field for the profitable and agreeable combination of labor with cultivated thought as agriculture. I know of nothing so pleasant to the mind, as the discovery of anything which is at once new and valuable -- nothing which so lightens and sweetens toil, as the hopeful pursuit of such discovery. And how vast, and how varied a field is agriculture, for such discovery. The mind, already trained to thought, in the country school, or higher school, cannot fail to find there an exhaustless source of profitable enjoyment.

Every blade of grass is a study; and to produce two, where there was but one, is both a profit and a pleasure. And not grass alone; but soils, seeds, and seasons -- hedges, ditches, and fences, draining, droughts, and irrigation -- plowing, hoeing, and harrowing -- reaping, mowing, and threshing -- saving crops, pests of crops, diseases of crops, and what will prevent or cure them -- implements, utensils, and machines, their relative merits, and [how] to improve them -- hogs, horses, and cattle -- sheep, goats, and poultry -- trees, shrubs, fruits, plants, and flowers -- the thousand things of which these are specimens -- each a world of study within itself.

Posted by Mary Ann Leonard

Added to History of Agriculture on February 12, 2008 | Permalink

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Your blog is outstanding! Here is an entry from the blog of the Archives of the Sandusky Library if you would care to take a look: http://sanduskyhistory.blogspot.com/search?q=moss+library

Submitted by: Sandusky Library on March 7, 2008 8:22 PM

Six Important Updates You Don't Want to Miss

In just the last two days I've noticed how many of the stories I've addressed over the last two months continue to pop up in the news. Given that, I thought it'd be interesting to see how things have moved on a few of them, or what fresh angles more recent coverage offers.

So, without further ado, here are the updates you don't want to miss:

• Since my October 15 entry on food recalls, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has issued a Food Protection Plan that seeks to identify potential foodborne hazards before they sicken or kill anyone, but the plan isn't impressing Congress. Members of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions have made some pretty strong statements indicating that neither it, nor the plan to enhance import safety, goes far enough.


• The potato cyst nematode doesn't seem too interested in joining the Year of the Potato celebration. Instead, it's spoiling the party by spreading to its eighth field in Idaho, threatening crop production there.


• Faster computers are accelerating the pace of discovery, but they're also making it possible to generate more realistic, more accurate and more powerful computer simulations. Such progress validates our October post on schools and industries moving away from using animals for education and experimentation.


• Avocado farmers who have started to regroup after October's wildfires are learning that their crop insurance doesn't cover as much as they thought it would. And even those that can expect some payments might not see money until early 2009.


• The farm bill has stalled on its way through the Senate, and there's really no telling where this one's gonna end up. Today word hit that U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid would be filing a cloture motion this afternoon. Such a motion, if passed, would limit any further debate on the farm bill to 30 hours, but a similar attempt a few weeks ago failed to get the 60 votes required for passage.


• "Sometimes it pays to read the old literature." So said Dr. Peter Palese, a researcher who determined why winter is flu season. And though I've not written a lick about the flu, I thought the lesson Dr. Palese offers to be a timely reminder that some ideas have been thunk before, which was, in fact, the main point behind the Starting Right with Turkeys entry. The Web holds valuable, historical stuff. Make use of it.

If you have more updates to add, feel free to send 'em along.

Posted by Mary Ann Leonard

Added to Animals and Emergency Response and Farm Bill and Food and Nutrition and History of Agriculture and Plants and Crops on December 05, 2007 | Permalink

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Seven Score and Six Years Ago Today

Yesterday and today are important days in the history of the United States Department of Agriculture, and I'm betting most folks don't even know it.

What's the big deal?

On December 2, 1861, 146 years ago yesterday, the 37th Congress set in writing three significant pieces of legislation.

• The first established a Department of Agriculture within the Government.
• The second, later known as the Homestead Act, provided 160 acres of land to any American or prospective citizen over the age of 21 who satisfied certain criteria.
• And the third, the Morrill Land Grant College Act, granted Federal land to the states for colleges of agriculture and the mechanical arts.

Agriculture, confessedly the largest interest of the nation, has not a department nor a bureau, but a clerkship only, assigned to it in the Government. While it is fortunate that this great interest is so independent in its nature as to not have demanded and extorted more from the Government, I respectfully ask Congress to consider whether something more can not be given voluntarily with general advantage.

Annual reports exhibiting the condition of our agriculture, commerce, and manufactures would present a fund of information of great practical value to the country. While I make no suggestions as to details, I venture the opinion that an agricultural and statistical bureau might profitably be organized.

Despite the apparent wholesale agreement on the matter, it took a while for these ideas to gestate fully. Lincoln did not sign either of the first two acts into law until May 1862, with the Morrill Act waiting until July of that year.

Despite the delay, all three laws deeply shaped the face of this country and of agriculture. In fact, the law that outlined the Department's creation still remains the basic authority for the Department today, establishing its basic mission:

To acquire and to diffuse among the people of the United States useful information on subjects connected with agriculture in the most general and comprehensive sense of that word, and to procure, propagate, and distribute among the people new and valuable seeds and plants.

So, though it's not quite time to say "Happy Birthday, USDA!" perhaps we can acknowledge today as its date of conception, the day when campaign promises and political stumping translated into legislative action, transforming the American West and American history.

To learn more, see what we've got on USDA history or the history of agriculture in general. Or contact our Special Collections for an in-depth look at the documents and manuscripts that have helped mold us, both as a Department and as a nation.

Posted by Mary Ann Leonard

Added to History of Agriculture on December 03, 2007 | Permalink

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Starting Right with Turkeys

Turkey raising offers a most interesting project. It will fascinate your friends who visit you. You will be envied by them, especially as Thanksgiving approaches and you have no worries about having a tasty bird for this feast. The project will offer diversions from the anxieties of office work or business. It can be excellent training for a boy or girl, particularly in 4-H Club work, or any kind of a home project.

Thus opined G. T. Klein in his 1947 publication Starting Right with Turkeys, a product of his days working as an Extension Poultry Husbandman at the Massachusetts State College, Amherst.

The book, a no-nonsense manual on raising turkeys, tackles the practical details of a do-it-yourself backyard turkey project from a time when such a thing was more feasible than most city ordinances make it today. (Though urban chickens are gaining ground, so maybe the pendulum will swing back for turkeys as well.)

Klein's work joins over 1,800 other books and journals in Cornell Library's collection of the Core Historical Literature of Agriculture. The materials there track the evolution of farming, agriculture and rural life through the 19th and 20th centuries, providing a deep look into a social, economic and industrial phenomenon.

But more than that, this early literature records information about sustainable agricultural methods that is still relevant today. It is, in large part (pre-1942, that is), farming without pesticides and chemical fertilizers using techniques that, by their nature, are more "organic," more geared toward ecological balance (even if that contemporary principle wasn't in the forefront back then).

The Library's Alternative Farming Systems Information Center has pulled together a similar collection specifically on organic agriculture called Organic Agriculture Information Access (aka Organic Roots). This budding database contains almost 200 historic USDA publications from before 1942, clearly making what was old new again.

So over this holiday weekend, in between the eating, sleeping and shopping, explore the history of the agricultural field of your liking. You might be surprised by what you find -- a new hobby, new methods or just a way to fascinate your friends (even if the tasty bird you're eating didn't grow up in your own backyard).

Posted by Mary Ann Leonard

Added to Animals and History of Agriculture and Organic Production on November 21, 2007 | Permalink

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