Archives West Finding Aid

These bound volumes contain “progress reports” on the Agricultural Extension Service’s activities, arranged by county in Washington State. Included in these bound volumes are summaries of outreach programs, descriptions of efforts to improve record keeping on Washington State farms, details on the activities of local agricultural and economic clubs or syndicates, and documentation on efforts at hosting training conferences and seminars. These collected reports detail efforts at encouraging farmers to adopt varieties of cereals suitable to their regions, creating seed banks, maintaining cost records of plowing, harrowing, weeding, seeding, and harvesting, and efforts to improve local agricultural and community infrastructure to ensure irrigation, water supply, and sewage disposal. These bound volumes provide a unique local insight into the activities of the Agricultural Extension Service in the interwar period. They also demonstrate the process whereby Washington State agriculture adopted the key aspects of industrial farming that would later become known as the Green Revolution starting in 1945.