Sharing the Science of Agricultural Practice: Information Transfer via the Annual Reports of the United States Department of Agriculture, 1862–1868

ABSTRACT The information work at the U.S. Department of Agriculture not only altered the kind and amount of information farmers had access to, but effectively sought to redefine who the experts were: through the production and dissemination of research conducted by scientists at the Department, or work by others filtered through the institution. One vehicle for this information transfer was the annual report. This study identifies and examines the information work of the agency from 1862–1868 and situates it within the context of the emergence of the modern state and the history of information. It is conceded on all hands that the farming interest is the basis of all other interests and the primary source of national prosperity. The outlines of the rise and decay of the Roman empire could have been written in the fields which environed the capitol as well as in her libraries amid historical records. Report of Mr. Owen Lovejoy (IL) from the House Committee on Agriculture, February 11, 1862. (Rives et al., 1862, p. 856) [The American farmer] belongs to a class of citizens who hold in their hands five-sixths of the wealth of the country and its entire political power; and the hands which have wrought this wealth are able to defend the Constitution which makes us one people. Isaac Newton, Commissioner of Agriculture, January 1, 1863. (United States Department of Agriculture, 1863, p. 14)