Farmers Helping Farmers: The Rise of the Farm and Home Bureaus, 1914–1935 by Nancy K. Berlage (review)

In 1911, rural people in counties across the United States began to form private voluntary organizations to educate themselves. They wanted thriving farms, and by the early 1920s, these county associations had been renamed bureaus and appeared in every state. According to Nancy K. Berlage in Farmers Helping Farmers: The Rise of the Farm and Home Bureaus, 1914–1935, science was central to the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF), and members focused most on disseminating scientific knowledge through its impressive organizational systems. Borrowing historian Louis Galambos’s “organizational synthesis,” Berlage uses the concept to argue that people at the local level enthusiastically engaged with the AFBF (p. 5). This reinterpretation of the history of the AFBF challenges the mostly negative views of it, since other historians have criticized the organization as an elitist group with undue influence on national politics. By focusing on local developments, Berlage argues that the AFBF provided structure, efficiency, professional standards, public relations, and expertise to rural people who wanted science to ensure their success as farmers.

Berlage covers a twenty-year period when farmers experienced tremendous scientific and technological change, a moment she acknowledges that other agricultural historians have documented well. What she adds is an overlooked perspective that takes seriously the experiences of rural people who wanted to learn about what a scientific approach to farming could offer and apply it to their lives. Six chapters tell the story of local farm bureaus, primarily in Illinois, Iowa, and New York, adding a few examples from other states. The narrative begins by explaining the origins and structure of the organization. The culture of persuasion that developed in these farm bureaus was pervasive, and Berlage challenges the one-dimensional assessment that the AFBF was coercive. She argues that some members threatened by marginalization found sociability and a sense of belonging in the AFBF. The AFBF also supported the development of cooperatives, which Berlage studies broadly. In addition to economic cooperatives, members pursued social cooperation enthusiastically, which meant that members organized a slew of picnics, sports festivals, dramas, musicals, and other contests. Social cohesion was crucial during the efforts to eradicate bovine tuberculosis, when the federal government, the AFBF, and university and extension experts worked together to convince reluctant farmers to cull their herds.

A strong component of this analysis is gender, and Berlage expands on the work of historians of rural women to move beyond their economic contributions to investigate their assertions of private and public authority. Women moved fluidly among sometimes competing notions of gender. In some circumstances they championed their roles as wives and mothers, while in other cases they emphasized the equality of their partnerships on the farm. Berlage finds that, while separatist home bureaus could reify gendered ideas of women as homemakers, scientific expertise gave authority to women’s work and expanded it to include rural sociology and health sciences. In local contexts, women worked as producers, especially in the poultry industry, which allowed them to demand a central role in developing and managing poultry co-operatives. Finally, involving children through boys and girls clubs allowed the AFBF to affirm its traditionalist commitment to the family farm while simultaneously promoting modernist notions of capitalism through projects that taught marketability, profit making, and cash consciousness.

Berlage uses a wealth of untapped primary sources, including reports, newsletters, and newspaper articles, as well as poems, songs, and skits, to create a compelling narrative of the farm bureau. As she concedes, Farmers Helping Farmers does little with race and leaves open questions about class. While she contends that membership was widespread and included farmers of modest means, she admits that farm bureaus were really for farmers interested in entrepreneurship, economic success, and scientific and technological advancement. Her study also focuses regionally on the Midwest and Northeast, which leaves little opportunity for regional comparisons with the West or...