As a South Carolina congressman, Frank Lever — a Clemson life trustee —
would team with Sen. Hoke Smith of Georgia to author a bill that would
carry both their names. The Smith-Lever Act, which became law May 8,
1914, authorized the Cooperative Extension Service, in which federal,
state and county governments cooperate to extend research-based science
from land-grant universities like Clemson to working people who could
apply it.
“As early as 1905, Clemson was publishing a weekly fertilizer bulletin
and mailing it to 12,000 farmers and agricultural businesses,”
In the century since, the revolutionary concept of extending
university-based knowledge to working people resulted in Lever’s
“revolution” in crop yields. An acre that grew 24 bushels of corn in
1911 will harvest, on average, six times as much today.
http://creative.clemson.edu/clemsonworld/2014/05/agricultural-revolutionary/
Clemson has always been a world leader in agricultural research. As populations increase more resources need to be directed to sustainable food production to feed a hungry world. I trust that Clemson will be on the forefront of this vital effort. I am proud to be a Clemson graduate.
ReplyDeleteI am also mick.
ReplyDeleteThe more I study, the more I see that widespread hunger is the result of politics and power consolidation and much less about yields. Increases in yields have driven the cost of some grains, meat and dairy products down, and in response, the tax payers start paying corporations to not grow. Oh yeah, that was another nice feature of increased yields, independent farmers being driven out of their independence.
ReplyDeleteI see this as somewhat like our healthcare system. What we can do with technology has surpassed our ability to use it wisely and has created a host of new issues.
Hi Max, I was thinking of those countries which can't produce adequate food for their own people. The U.S. doesn't have that problem. Of course those corporations are just people, like your cousin Joe or aunt Lizzie, the Supreme Court said so. So they are family farms too aren't they? (attempted humor)
ReplyDeletePeople have the free right to associate, and incorporate. Band together to produce greater yields and conserve more land and water in the process.
DeleteMaking a profit while doing so? Why, our progressive friends don't think that is a legitimate pastime. How ironic that they profess centralized planning in government but frown upon it when it produces a profit for a private corporation.
640 Institutions hold shares in Archer Daniels Midland Company. Each institution has thousands of owners or shareholders. These owners have each voted with their property (dollars). What could be more democratic?