Advances and Trends in the Agricultural Sciences
Overview
After their emergence as a distinct realm of professional scientific research in the nineteenth century, the agricultural sciences continued their impact in the first half of the twentieth century. Led by developments in genetics, animal nutrition, bacteriology, and agricultural chemistry, farmers were able to produce more food from existing lands, and also to extend their production into lands that had previously been beyond the realm of cultivation. As a consequence, successful agricultural production became increasingly dependent upon access to the information and capital associated with the agricultural sciences.
Background
Although most developments in nineteenth-century agricultural sciences originated in western Europe, three important pieces of legislation shifted the stage to the United States by the early twentieth century. The Hatch Act of 1887 provided funds for the establishment of agricultural experiment stations in each American state and territory, the Adams Act of 1906 doubled these stations' funding and allowed for increased emphasis on basic research in the agricultural sciences, and the Smith-Lever Act of 1914 supported agricultural extension programs and thereby lessened scientists' duties to work directly for farmers. The United States Department of Agriculture thus became one of the world's centers for scientific research, using a network of extension agents, publications, and, by the 1930s, weekly radio shows to disseminate scientific knowledge among practicing farmers and to the public at large.
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