First, most Rural Sociology textbooks have at least some treatment
of both farm organizations in general, and the Farm Bureau in
particular. The latest edition that I have (1988) of the frequently re-
printed text by Rogers and Burdge, later Rogers, Burdge, Korsching, and
Donnermeyer (Social Change in Rural Societies: An Introduction to Rural
Sociology by Prentice-Hall) says (1988:242-243): "The first Farm Bureau
was organized in Broome County, New York, in 1911. The Chamber of
Commerce in the town of Binghamton, New York, was composed of a number
of sections or bureaus, one of which was known as the "Farm Bureau." It
was composed of farmers and businessmen interested in improving
agriculture. This first Farm Bureau was an educational agency designed
to help farmers learn better methods of agriculture. Funds to support
this program were supplied in part by the Delaware, Lackawanna, and
Western Railroad. The employees of the Farm Bureau became known as "farm
agents" because it was the custom of the day to refer to any railroad
employee as an agent.
The educational program of the Broome County Farm Bureau initiated
the idea of an extension "agent" residing in the county. The county
agent movement was spurred by the Smith-Lever Act of 1914, which
provided federal funds to pay for such extension work. By 1918, there
was a county agent in almost every county of the United States. So the
Farm Bureau of Broom County was rapidly copied throughout the United
States."
The go on to point out that the original purpose of the county
farm bureaus was educational. However, they soon learned that they
could become a pressure group to further farm interests. When they
began to do this, the fact that their funds came from federal sources
became problematic, however, it was not until 1952 (in Illinois, I
believe) that the final formal separation between the Farm Bureau and
the federal government's funding was achieved.
Second, the Farm Bureau is frequently criticized for using its
insurance membership as the basis for (1) claiming broad-based political
influence, and (2) bringing a constituency into its "fold," as if there
were something illegitimate about this. Perhaps, according to some
standards, there is. However, the manipulation of membership numbers is
a strategy used by all interest groups, farm, environmental, and
otherwise. At least you can get numbers from the FB. Try to get real
numbers from AIM, NFO, or most environmental groups. This information
is usually a trade secret. Is that bad? The key feature of the FB is
that they have done their analysis of social organization well, and
recognized early on what rural sociologists have always referred to as
the "Three legged stool of farm organization." The three legs are
education, policy influence, and the provision of concrete, economic
services. They learned early on that, to be effective in the long run,
an organization had to do all three. This is, of course, completely
consistent with the analytic work on organization as a public good, for
example, the work of Mancur Olsen.
Third, and most importantly, there should be a lesson in this
entire discussion. As social scientists, at least, it should not be our
primary task to find out who are the bad guys and who are the good guys
from our point of view, and to castigate the one while praising the
other. It should be to understand real social processes, and to provide
this information to the public for its use. I believe we have to be
very careful about using our privileged position as taxpayer supported
scientists to advocate particular political or policy views.
Finally, there is a very interesting aspect of organizational
dynamics that has emerged in this discussion about the FB. True, FB
takes positions on a very wide variety of public policy issues. If you
haven't ever done so, you ought to get a list of the resolutions which
go up from your county, or from your state. True, these are aggregated
from the county level up. The intriguing question, though, is exactly
how this agenda gets set, and how democratic that is, in fact. What
role does staff play in setting the initial agenda of what the counties
propose? What about things that don't show up on the agenda? Whey
don't they show up? And this set of questions plops us directly into
the realm of democratic theory and practice. What is the nature of
popular sovereignty? How can democracy prevail when interest groups--
such as FB, Sierra Club, you name it, play the key mediating role
between the citizen and government? But this is enough already--quite a
bit too much, I'm afraid.
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++ Donald E. Voth, Professor of Rural Sociology ++
++ Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology ++
++ University of Arkansas, A227 ++
++ Fayetteville, AR 72701 ++
++Tel. 501-575-2409 FAX 501-575-5306 e-mail dvoth@comp.uark.edu++
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