Karl Hobson Papers, 1934-1978

Karl Hobson was born in 1906 on a farm near Sedan, Kansas. He received B.S. and M.S. degrees from the University of Idaho and did graduate work at Cornell University. In 1935, he worked as a state specialist in forecasting and farm management for the Idaho Extension Service before joining Washington State College (now Washington State University) as a specialist in livestock marketing in 1947. In 1948, Hobson became a full-time specialist in farm forecasting.

In 1949, Hobson met Elliot Marple and in 1950 they formed a joint-partnership to publish Hobson's Farm Forecast, a weekly newsletter directed to farmers in the Pacific Northwest. Marple, a Seattle-based business forecaster, published Marple’s Business Roundup, a weekly newsletter covering business market opportunities in the Pacific Northwest. Hobson, in Pullman, provided the text, while Marple, in Seattle produced the weekly publication through his existing Roundup operation. In December 1952, Hobson and Marple dissolved their joint-partnership and created Hobson's Farm Forecast, Inc., in part as a preventive measure against possible libel suits from disgruntled subscribers to the Forecast. Shortly afterwards, Hobson left the Bureau of Agricultural Extension at WSC and worked full-time for the corporation. In 1955, Hobson and Marple sold Hobson's Farm Forecast, Inc. to Doane Agricultural Service, Inc., of Carmichael, California. The publication of Hobson's Farm Forecast also ended in 1955 with its subscribers subsumed by Doane's Western Farm Forecast.

Hobson accepted a promotion with the Bureau of Agricultural Extension at WSC, while continuing to write for the Western Farm Forecast part time. Doane ceased publishing the Western Farm Forecast in 1957. In 1966, Hobson won the Western Farm Economics Association’s Outstanding Extension Program Award for his prediction of wheat scarcity in the mid-1960s. Hobson retired in 1971. In the 1970s, he and his wife, Dorothy, moved to Maui, Hawaii, where he died from cancer in 1986.