INTRODUCTION OF AGRICULTURE

Initially, the department's top priorities were agricultural research, food inspection,
and the oversight of national forests. By the 1930s, during the Great Depression, the USDA
began to administer programs designed to provide farmers with direct governmental support,
including a system of price supports and productions controls. During this critical stage of the
nation's history, the department also began to assist the needy in both rural and urban areas
through the distribution of food surpluses. Since World War II, the USDA has been called
upon to supervise even more extensive assistance programs while simultaneously
attempting to help farmers meet the ever-increasing needs of overseas markets.

Currently, the USDA conducts and supports agricultural research through its
Agricultural Research Service, and the department provides farmers with information needed
to successfully market their products through the Agricultural Marketing Service. Other
USDA agencies manage the national forests and supervise soil conservation and watershed
protection projects. In addition, there are also agencies that regulate the manufacture and
sale of products used to control pests and diseases associated with farming, that inspect
meat- and poultry-processing plants, and that enforce safety and labeling standards.

The USDA's Commodity Credit Corporation administers price support and subsidy
programs, and the Rural Housing Service and Rural Utilities Service are cornerstones of the
department's rural development efforts. The USDA also administers the food-stamp and
schoollunch programs. In a nation marked by urban growth, the department's immediate
challenge is to help farmers increase production to meet increasing demands and to do so in
ways that are environmentally sound.

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In 1796 George Washington recommended creating a national board of agriculture

to disseminate information on agricultural practices and award prizes for innovations. This
goal was not realized until more than half a century later, but by the early 1820s Congress
and most state legislatures had established agricultural committees. Agricultural societies
and fairs in the same period attested to the widespread interest in improving farm techniques
in a nation still overwhelmingly rural.

The Department of Agriculture originated in a roundabout way through the interest of

Patent Office Commissioner Henry L. Ellsworth in farm machinery. In the late 1830s
Ellsworth began collecting agricultural information and distributing to farmers seeds gathered
overseas by embassy and military personnel. Starting in the 1840s, Patent Office annual
reports began to include large sections related to agriculture, and in the 1850s the office
initiated a modest research program. When the Civil War erupted, Southern Congressmen—
who had questioned the constitutionality of a federal agricultural agency—left Washington.
This allowed Congress to create a small Department of Agriculture (USDA) in 1862, which
was given a broad mandate "to acquire and to diffuse … information on subjects connected
with agriculture in the most general and comprehensive sense of that word. …" Shortly after
President Abraham Lincoln signed the act on 15 May 1862, he appointed a successful
Pennsylvania dairy farmer, Isaac Newton, to be the first commissioner of agriculture.

Soon the Department of Agriculture began hiring scientists and publishing regular
statistics about commodity production and prices. Early research focused on improving plant
and animal varieties. The passage of the Hatch Experiment Station Act in 1887 set up state
agricultural experiment stations in the land-grant colleges that, with the cooperation and
leadership of the Department's own investigators, rapidly propelled the United States to
the forefront of scientific research in agriculture. In 1889 USDA attained the status of a
cabinet department, and farm journalist Norman Jay Colman became the first secretary of
agriculture.

Over the next thirty years, USDA steadily acquired new functions as Americans
began asking the government to take on new roles. The Meat Inspection Act of 1890 gave
USDA the job of inspecting exported meat, a function soon expanded to give the Department
an extensive role in insuring the safety of domestic and exported foods. Also in the 1890s,
the Department began to study nutrition, promote farm exports, and manage forestlands set
aside for timber and recreation. It created two major agencies it later lost to other
departments—the Weather Bureau (1890) and the Office of Road Inquiry (1893)—the latter
of which evolved into the massive federal road-building program.

In 1914 the Smith-Lever Act set up an extension service to bring agricultural

research directly to farmers. Like the experiment stations, extension was an early example of
federal cooperation with the states. The 1914 Cotton Futures Act was the first of many laws
putting USDA in the business of market regulation, while the Federal Farm Loan Act of 1916
launched the Department's first credit program for farmers. USDA also played an important
role in increasing food production during World War I.

Following the collapse of wartime farm commodity prices in 1920, agriculture entered
a new era in which surplus production would depress farm income and create demands for
new forms of assistance. The Department's fledgling economics work was bolstered by the
1922 establishment of the Bureau of Agricultural Economics, whose analyses were designed
to help farmers make better management decisions. The Capper Volstead Act of 1922
encouraged farmers to form cooperatives that would give them more control of supply
purchases and marketing. The main interest, however, was in finding a way to restore farm
prices to their previous levels. Bills setting up innovative farm programs were vetoed in the
1920s, but the onset of a general depression after 1929 made the government more willing
to act.

The New Deal under Franklin D. Roosevelt and secretary of agriculture Henry A.
Wallace transformed USDA into its modern form with a sweeping string of initiatives that
greatly enlarged the scope of government action. The Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933
attacked the surplus problem through both price supports and acreage reductions. While
farm programs have been much modified since then, most of the subsequent tools for price
support and adjustment were first used under the 1933 act. Soil conservation, which aimed
to stop erosion on farmland, complemented the government's effort to remove marginal land
from cultivation. Excess farm commodities were also reduced through school lunch and food
stamp programs. The Department gave special attention to poor farmers through credit,
education, tenant, and resettlement programs. It also made a substantial commitment to
bringing the quality of rural life closer to urban standards through electrification and farm-to-
market roads. Most of these new functions brought new agencies with them, and by 1940
USDA's employment had reached a peak of close to 100,000. Overall, USDA programs
helped mitigate the worst effects of the Depression.

With the advent of World War II, farm surpluses became an advantage rather than a
liability. USDA quickly shifted gears to encourage maximum production and to get all citizens
involved in growing gardens and saving essential products like fats. Price controls and
rationing, while not under USDA administration, kept food affordable while permitting as
much as possible to be diverted to military use.

The postwar era began a period of rapid change for agriculture. Years of research
came to fruition in an unprecedented technological revolution that resulted in the most rapid
productivity increases in agricultural history. New farm machinery, better seeds, new animal
breeds, and the rapid adoption of new chemical fertilizers and pesticides modernized
agriculture. Farms became larger, more specialized, and more highly capitalized.
Undercapitalized producers who could not compete left their farms, often for big cities. This
created problems for rural areas losing population. In the mid-1950s USDA began planning
rural development programs to find nonagricultural solutions to rural economic problems.
Meanwhile, the productivity revolution had brought a return of surplus production and sent
many commodity prices down to their minimum support levels. New conservation programs
took some land out of cultivation.

Orville L. Freeman, secretary under President Kennedy, set about expanding

USDA's non-farm programs. Seeking to turn surplus production to an advantage, he
obtained greatly enlarged food stamp, food distribution, school lunch, and rural development
programs to combat poverty and did much to increase donations to poor countries overseas,
which had become significant under the Food for Peace (PL 480) program of 1954. The
Department also began its first serious efforts to desegregate under Freeman and began to
regulate pesticides more stringently because of environmental concerns about their effects
on wildlife and human health.

The 1970s were a time of expanding farm exports and strong prices. At the same
time, food programs grew to become over half the Department's budget. When exports
tumbled in the early 1980s, many farmers were plunged into financial crisis. Congress
responded with the Food Security Act (1985), which strengthened export promotion and
conservation programs and gave farmers more flexibility to respond to market conditions.
These trends continued with new legislation in 1990 and 1996. Free trade agreements in
1993 (North American Free Trade Agreement) and 1994 (Uruguay Round of the General
Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) put American agriculture more than ever in a global
context.

USDA went through a substantial reorganization beginning in 1994 that reduced the
number of agencies and consolidated most farm programs. At the beginning of the twenty-
first century, USDA remains one of the largest federal agencies. While still putting agriculture
first, it serves all Americans through a wide range of programs covering food safety,
nutrition, food subsidies, rural development, and forestry.

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