CHAPTER XXI 



THE COUNTY AGENT 



The County Agent Movement. The most significant move- 

 ment in agriculture in America in the present generation is the 

 County Agent movement. It is a movement which is closest to 

 the farmer. It is a movement that has back of it, in most cases, 

 a Farm Bureau composed of dues-paying farmers. The County 

 Agent lives in the county among the farmers he serves. His work 

 is therefore responsive to local needs and conditions, although done 

 in cooperation with distant State and federal agencies. It is the 

 movement which most effectively creates agricultural leadership, 

 and is in turn directed by that leadership. And community 

 leadership of the farmer, by the farmer, and for the farmer is the 

 most vital need of the rural community. 



Definition. A County Agent is a person of agricultural educa- 

 tion and experience employed in a county to promote the general 

 welfare of agriculture in that county. For over fifty years the 

 agricultural colleges of the country have been teaching and have 

 been conducting experiments. Enough scientific information has 

 thus been accumulated to revolutionize agriculture and readjust 

 rural home life and rural community life. But the teaching force 

 and the printed bulletins proved wholly inadequate to carry to 

 the people themselves this knowledge. The natural step, therefore, 

 was to create an agency to make available to the farmers themselves 

 the accumulated information and experience of the Federal Depart- > 

 ment of Agriculture, the State Departments of Agriculture, the 

 State Colleges of Agriculture, the great private experimental 

 farms, and the practices of the best farmers themselves. Accord- 

 ingly the Federal Department of Agriculture, as a first step, under 

 the leadership of Dr. Seaman A. Knapp, established throughout ^ 

 the South Demonstration Agents, to carry to the individual farmer 

 suggestions, help, and advice. These itinerant teachers succeeded 

 in having many farmers modify their farm management in the 

 direction of diversification of crops, home gardens, deep plowing, 

 use of fertilizers, better seed selection, and better relationships 

 with bankers and merchants. What the individual farmers accom- 

 plished under this leadership, they did on their own farms, under 

 their own conditions. It is a noteworthy fact that farmers are 



