Planting the Seeds of Research: How America’s Ultimate Investment Transformed Agriculture

Planting the Seeds of Research explores why by the beginnings of the twentieth century the United States dominated agricultural production worldwide.

The thesis is that the ultimate investments made by the United States Department of Agriculture and State governments created the research structure that made American agriculture spectacularly successful. The social commitment, by business, government and farmers built the productive capabilities that generated sustainable prosperity in American agriculture. The ultimate investment in agriculture enabled Americans over time to spend less of their disposable income on food and more on other goods and services, and compete in international agricultural markets.

‘Planting the Seeds of Research is a timely and provocative analysis of the role of the agricultural sector in America’s modern economic development and of the part played by the US government in promoting that sector. By deftly combining agricultural history, political history and administrative history, Ferleger provides readers with a new appreciation of the ways in which the public and private sectors worked together to make American agriculture the most productive in the world.’ - Peter A. Coclanis, Albert R. Newsome Distinguished Professor of History, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA

‘Over decades, Louis Ferleger has examined how the United States emerged as an unrivaled economic powerhouse through continuous, critical investment in scientific agriculture. Government in partnership with the private sector drew on European - especially German - models to develop education, innovation, expertise and research at every level.’ - David Moltke-Hansen, Independent Scholar, Past President of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania