The Cornbelt's Last Open Pollinated Corn: Agricultural extension and the origins of the hybrid corn seed industry

Abstract

Societal Impact StatementAgricultural extension is recognized as an important pathway for generating changes in individual farmers' practices and therefore broader patterns of production. In the United States, historical research has implicated extension work in transformations that privileged White farmers and wealthier operations over other producers and that fostered the industrialization and consolidation of farms. This article examines the work of one early 20th‐century extension agent and the demonstrations he used to teach farmers how to choose and keep corn seeds and to identify the best performing corn varieties for a particular location. This history can inform contemporary efforts to develop more socially and ecologically aware approaches to agricultural research, extension, and production by emphasizing the need for measures of success that align with community‐level objectives and for larger institutional structures that support and sustain such goals.Summary The article examines the histories of agricultural extension and crop development in the early 20th‐century United States. It discusses the role of farm demonstrations, including the participation of farmer‐breeders, in the development of spread of higher yielding corn varieties in the Midwestern states in the 1910s and 1920s. It highlights the emphasis placed on finding locally or regionally appropriate varieties in some early corn extension activities and dwells on the irony that these locally specific endeavors played a role in the development of universalized solutions. The article examines and contextualizes an unusual archival document as an entry point into these histories: The Cornbelt's Last Open Pollinated Corn, a two‐volume work prepared by Martin Luther Mosher (1882–1982). Mosher was the first county agricultural extension agent in the state of Iowa and worked in extension until his retirement in 1950. The article makes three main observations: (1) The Cornbelt's Last Open Pollinated Corn is best read as an agricultural demonstration; (2) The Cornbelt's Last Open Pollinated Corn is Mosher's attempt to grapple with the material legacies of his extension work in relation to the different agricultural life he idealized; and (3) Mosher's work exemplifies the complex relationships and expectations seen among breeders, seed companies, extension agents, and farmers in the early 20th‐century United States. The article concludes that Mosher's work with open‐pollinated corn varieties offers insight into the importance of agricultural extension as a means of crop development and highlights the contingent nature of agricultural industrialization.