2. Significance of the Materials


government policy and attitudes toward the agricultural enterprise and the response of the individual
farmer and farm communities to greater government involvement and intervention.

Before 1834, farm journals presented information without much regard for system or organization.
Subsequently, journals began to develop columns such as "Cattle Husbandry, "Horticulture", and
"Poultry". These columns reveal the roots of the developing specialization of agriculture--a trend that
was reflected in a dramatic increase of periodicals and monographs in the late 19th century devoted to a
specific type of farm activity. However, in addition to information about technical agriculture, the
numerous local, regional, and national farm journals routinely included editorial comment, political and
economic reviews, a "ladies comer" aimed at the purview and concerns of the farm wife, columns on
family and community issues, and extensive advertising. The substantial home, family, and community
content distinguishes the literature of pre-1945 agriculture from the literature of the latter part of the
20th century that focuses exclusively on technical and financial information. The changing content of
the literature documents the contest between two ways of life: one urban-based and tied to industrial
forms of production, the other rural and tied to family, community, individual, and craft-based
production. Thus the literature of agriculture before 1945 is a unique chronicle of the tensions between
these two worlds.

The application of the principles of science and engineering to agriculture--so spectacularly realized
since World War II--had its beginnings in the 19th century. The result of decades of applied research
was an increase in agricultural production that was unparalleled in the history of civilization. The United
States lead the world in this remarkable effort. However, the productivity of modem agriculture had its
dark side. In addition to altering the landscape and social structure of rural American communities, the
intensive use of energy, fertilizers and pesticides created a wasteful, polluting, and ultimately
unsustainable system of food and fiber production.

Thus the social, economic and cultural insight afforded to historians by agricultural literature is only one
of its important dimensions. Nineteenth and early twentieth-century publications are in great demand
from scientists who are looking for information about the interplay between agriculture and the
environment. While current research in agriculture offers potentially promising approaches for the
ongoing revolution in agricultural values and techniques variously referred to as "sustainable agriculture",
alternative agriculture", and "organic agriculture", many scientists are also looking back at the history of
agriculture for ideas and insights. Increasing concern about the use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers
cause researchers to comb the literature looking for inspiration from earlier, natural methods of
combating disease and pests. Historical literature can provide clues to the efficacy and environmental
impact of earlier methods. The search for clues to a sustainable agriculture capable of feeding the earth's
current five billion persons is sending researchers back to literature as diverse as the archeological record
of desert civilizations and the transactions of state agricultural societies in 19th century New England.

The historical literature of agriculture chronicles the beginning of an era in which the pressures of
population and the opportunities of urban and global markets resulted in an agricultural system which is
arguably the most productive in the world, but which is also a major contributor to environmental
degradation. In trying to increase efficiency of land and labor use, traditional farming practices and
systems were abandoned in favor of large-scale, energy-intensive methods--often involving seasonal
workers. The negative effects of modern agriculture were largely unanticipated, and thus the story of
agriculture's transformation is also of major interest to cultural historians chronicling the history of the
environmental and agricultural worker's rights movements, and the rise of the land conservation ethic.

The literature of agriculture is replete with information about sustainable agricultural methods,
 observations, production, and effects. Until the 1940s, farmers did not use pesticides and chemical
 fertilizers in great quantities. The record of pre-World War II agriculture is almost entirely a literature of
 what we now call "alternative" agriculture. In land grant university libraries across the country, 19th and