Abstract
For the first 150 years of the Republic, the government’s primary role in agriculture was to build institutions for education and innovation. Starting with the Ordinance of 1785, the federal government used land and other resources to promote public education of the populace and innovation in agriculture. The Morrill, Hatch, Smith-Lever, and Smith-Hughes Acts would follow. The original mission of USDA was experimentation and innovation to improve agricultural production. Intellectual property rights through the awarding of patents spurred innovations from the cotton gin to mechanical power and GMO plant varieties that revolutionized agriculture.
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Notes
- 1.
Since Congress was not in session at the time of Colman’s appointment in 1889, his role was never formally confirmed so it was technically a recess appointment.
- 2.
During his time as Wisconsin governor, Rusk gave the order to state militia to fire upon strikers advocating for an eight-hour workday in Milwaukee. This incident resulted in the deaths of seven protesters and is known in history as the Bay View Massacre.
- 3.
He was also given the nickname to distinguish him from Mr. James F. Wilson, who was serving as a US Senator from Iowa at the same time that “Tama Jim” Wilson was a US Congressman from the same state during the 1870s.
- 4.
President McKinley served one full term and then was assassinated early in his second term in 1901. Theodore Roosevelt, as McKinley’s vice president, served the remainder of McKinley’s second term and then was elected to one of his own. Taft served one term, then was defeated in his bid for a second term by Woodrow Wilson.
- 5.
In addition to the 13 states of the Confederacy, 1890 land grants were also established in Delaware, Maryland, Missouri, Kentucky, Oklahoma, and West Virginia.
- 6.
These seven states were Delaware, Georgia, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, and West Virginia. Maryland gave its land-grant money to a private black college which subsequently became a public institution.
- 7.
The bill was also known as the Vocational Education Act.
- 8.
This Party ran former President Theodore Roosevelt as a third-party candidate against the incumbent Republican President William Taft and Democratic nominee Woodrow Wilson in the 1916 president election.
- 9.
Although the phrase “Home Economics” had largely been phased out as an academic field in the 1980s, studies in this area continue in many land-grant universities under other subject titles, such as “Family and Consumer Sciences,” and within CTE programs at secondary schools.
- 10.
Section 7109 of the Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008.
- 11.
The Cooperative Extension Service was consolidated into the Cooperative State Research, Education and Extensive Service (CSREES) during the 1994 re-organization of USDA. CSREES was renamed the National Institute of Food and Agriculture in the Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008 (208 farm bill).
- 12.
The name was officially changed to the National FFA Organization in 1988.
- 13.
The other 13 states whose agricultural experiment stations predated the Hatch Act funding authorization were California, North Carolina, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Ohio, Tennessee, Alabama, Wisconsin, Louisiana, Maine, Kentucky, and Vermont.
- 14.
The Philippine Islands were acquired by the US government from Spain after the Spanish-American War in 1898 and given independence by the US government after World War II in 1946.
- 15.
Momentum for this combined bill was lost when its chief Senate sponsor, Senator Jonathan Dolliver from Iowa, then chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, died unexpectedly in October 1910.
- 16.
Representative Wilson later served as secretary of labor in the administration of President Woodrow Wilson.
- 17.
513 U.S. 179 (1995).
- 18.
447 U.S. 303 (1980).
- 19.
Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) is a naturally occurring bacterium found in some soils that are toxic to certain insect larvae, including the larvae of the European Corn Borer. When the Bt gene is introduced into the corn seed, it makes the resulting corn plant immune to the European Corn Borer.
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Mercier, S.A., Halbrook, S.A. (2020). Public Sector Institutions, Education, and Innovation. In: Agricultural Policy of the United States. Palgrave Studies in Agricultural Economics and Food Policy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36452-6_6
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