Federal Agricultural Policy Archive of 17 USDA Farmers’ Bulletins on Agriculture, Seed Storage, and Production Farming, Progressive Era to Dust Bowl Period 1898–1949

U S. Department of Agriculture

Archive

[Federal Agricultural Policy][Environmental Management][USDA] Archive of 17 United States Department of Agriculture Farmers’ Bulletins and federal publications issued between 1898 and 1949 documenting the federal government’s expanding role in agricultural science, land management, and homesteading during the Progressive Era and the decades surrounding the Dust Bowl. These bulletins document the federal government’s expanding role in agricultural production and were a crucial part of the print system through which the United State Department of Agriculture translated experiment-station research into practical directions for farmers and rural households. Several carry the red distribution stamp “Sent by Harry R. Sheppard Member of Congress,” preserving the congressional channels through which USDA advice circulated alongside the wider extension network. The bulletins were handed out free of charge through congressional offices, agricultural colleges, and rural postal networks, reaching millions of farm households and implementing federal agricultural policy at the local level. The publications represented here emerged from the legislature introduced by the Morrill Acts, the Hatch Act, and the Smith-Lever Act of 1914, which created the federal system linking agricultural research, land-grant universities, and cooperative extension services.

The earliest publications in this archive address plant disease and propagation, showing the USDA’s early emphasis on scientific control of crop failure and the standardization of cultivation practices. By the interwar and wartime decades the scope of instruction had widened to include vegetable production, seed storage, sweet potato preservation, cabbage disease, fern eradication from pasture lands, brush and stump clearing, and the control of Johnson grass, alongside household and regional titles such as The Home Fruit Garden in the Pacific Coast States and Arizona and Production of Maple Syrup and Sugar. These pamphlets show the department addressing both market agriculture and domestic food production, moving between specialized technical subjects such as seed treatment and broader guidance on gardens, storage, and rural land use.

Archive of 17 titles, including:

• The Grain Smuts: How They Are Caused and How to Prevent Them (1898)
• The Propagation of Plants (1902, reprinted 1924)
• Prevent Storage Rots of Sweet Potatoes (1934)
• Eradication of Ferns from Pasture Lands in the Eastern United States (1915, revised 1936)
• Production of Maple Sirup and Sugar (1924, revised 1937)
• Production of Spinach (1938)
• Culture and Uses of Okra (1905, revised 1928, 1940)
• Clearing Land of Brush and Stumps (1927, revised 1929, 1941)
• The Home Fruit Garden in the Pacific Coast States and Arizona (1942)
• Vegetable Seed Treatments (1940, revised 1942)
• Mixing Fertilizers on the Farm (1949)

Additional publications address crop storage, weed control, fertilizer preparation, and home food production, showing how USDA printing linked plant pathology, environmental management, and household economy within a single federal instructional program across the first half of the twentieth century. Seventeen pamphlets and booklets printed in staple-bound or pamphlet format, many with illustrated wrappers. Paper toned with scattered edge wear, creasing, rubbing, and light soiling; earlier bulletins show heavier age and use, and several mid-century pamphlets retain congressional distribution stamps. Overall good condition. A solid working archive of USDA extension printing that traces the federal government’s practical involvement in American farming, horticulture, and home economics from 1898 to 1949.

Item #23257

Price: $750.00