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Smithsonian plans big agriculture business exhibition

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Tennessee Farm Bureau member Pat Campbell is donating photographs like this one and other materials from Cleburne Jersey Farm, founded by his family in the 1870s. (National Museum of American History)


NASHVILLE — The Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History announced here this week that it is planning a major exhibition on the development of American agriculture as a business, and that the American Farm Bureau Federation is helping build a collection of stories, photographs and ephemera to be used in the exhibit.

“American Enterprise,” as the exhibit will be known, is scheduled to open in 2015.

Peter Liebhold
Peter Liebhold
“American agriculture has gone through a tremendous transformation in the last seven decades, becoming a high-tech industry, deeply affecting not just farmers themselves but every American and the American experience in general,” said Peter Liebhold, museum curator and chair of the museum’s Division of Work and Industry.

Liebhold spoke at a news conference during Farm Bureau’s annual meeting.

“The story of agriculture is important and complex,” John Gray, director of the museum, said in a news release.

“In Jefferson’s time, 96 percent of Americans were farmers; today, that number is less than 2 percent,” he said. “Despite this drop, productivity has skyrocketed and agriculture has evolved into a technology-driven profession with the cab of a tractor akin to a traditional CEO’s office.”

“American Enterprise” will tell the story of the nation’s business, centering on themes of opportunity, innovation, competition and common good with examples drawn from five areas, the museum said in a news release.

Besides agriculture, those areas will be consumer finance, information technology/communication, manufacturing and retail/service. Chronological in organization, “American Enterprise” will use objects, graphics and interactive experiences to examine how the United States moved from a small dependent nation to one of the world’s most vibrant and trend-setting economies, the museum added.

The exhibition will explore the development of American agriculture through objects such as Eli Whitney’s cotton gin, a 1920s Fordson tractor, Barbara McClintock’s microscope and Stanley Cohen’s recombinant DNA research notebook, which represent machines and innovation that increased productivity and science that gave insight to the genetic structure of plants, the museum said.

The first donation of photographs and other materials will come from Tennessee Farm Bureau member Pat Campbell of Cleburne Jersey Farm, a multigenerational dairy operation founded in the 1870s in Spring Hill, Tenn.

Curators will continue to seek materials and experiences to preserve the innovations and experiences of farming and ranching.

Coinciding with National Agriculture Day on March 19, the museum will unveil a new Web portal where the public can upload stories about technologies and innovation that have changed their work lives; stories about precision farming, traceability, environmental concerns, governmental practices, irrigation, biotechnology and hybrid seeds.

The exhibition will emphasize the roles of science and technology to dramatically increase production and choice while lowering prices, as well as changes that have altered the experience of farmers and the public in unexpected ways, Liebhold said. He told The Hagstrom Report that the exhibition will include large-scale organic farming, but not small-scale organics or farms oriented to nearby customers. A museum public relations official noted that the museum has a separate exhibition on food that includes small-scale, local farming.

Liebhold said he had been impressed by Earthbound Farms, a large organic operation in California, and by the United Soybean Board's international marketing efforts.

The agriculture exhibition is planned to be in four sections, Liebhold said:
  • 1770s to1850s, when agriculture dominated the U.S. economy.
  • 1860s to 1930s, when Americans moved to the cities and corporations rose.
  • 1940s to 1970s, when American agriculture increased productivity, efficiency and consumer choice.
  • 1980s to 2010, when American agriculture further increased efficiency through innovations such as satellite farming and went global in an interdependent world.

The National Museum of American History, located at 14th Street and Constitution Avenue NW in Washington, is renovating its West exhibition wing to develop galleries on business, democracy and culture.

“American Enterprise” is scheduled to open in the new Mars Hall of American Business, Liebhold said, noting that the Mars candy company has contributed $5 million of the $20 million needed to be raised to mount the exhibition.

Julie Anna Potts, Farm Bureau executive vice president and treasurer and chair of the exhibition’s Agriculture committee, said that Farm Bureau has not made any financial contribution to date, but may consider one.

Other members of the agriculture advisory committee:
  • Sharon Covert of Covert Farms, Inc., La Harpe, Ill.
  • Dean Oestrich of DuPont/Pioneer
  • Jennifer Goldston of Pioneer
  • Ray Fuchs of Monsanto
  • Susan Fugate, head collections specialist with the Agriculture Department’s Agricultural Research Service
  • Christina Bowen, national contributions director of the Farm Credit System.