Farmer Ernest Kasting and his trusty team use a hay binder near Seymour, Ind., about 1915. Photo: Courtesy of AFIA’s Anne Keller. |
The American Feed Manufacturers Association had started in Milwaukee under the care of W.R. Anderson and G.D. Simonds of Flour & Feed magazine. After a decade’s growth and the addition of a full-time secretary in 1913, AFMA in 1919 made a big move down the Lake Michigan shoreline to Chicago.
In 1919, the United States was adjusting to the end of World War I. The U.S. Food Administration, which President Woodrow Wilson had established when the United States entered the war, was dismantled quickly. Under Food Administrator Herbert Hoover, U.S. food exports tripled while domestic consumption declined about 15 percent.
Farmers still relied on horses for most of their field power. “The Horse Power Problem on the Farm,” an article in the 1919 USDA Yearbook of Agriculture, reported on the challenges of getting enough horse power without investing in too much idle horse time. Tractors started doing some heavy work like plowing, but horses still carried most of the farm load. They also consumed a great deal of feed, but that was about to change. |
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A farmer and his mules work amidst pecan and satsuma orange trees in Louisiana. Photo: Courtesy of AFIA’s Anne Keller.
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Meanwhile, feed technology was changing. At Ralston Purina, William H. Danforth decided to put Purina Chows – which had carried that name since 1916 – into a new form he had seen in England. Pressing several ingredients into small cubes proved to be popular, and pelleting soon swept the feed industry.
As pelleting developed, alfalfa processors tried new ideas. During the 1920s, dehydrators built the first tunnel dryers while other innovators worked to develop forage choppers. The alfalfa dehydrating industry was budding.
While the speculative boom fueled gains in stocks and much of the U.S. economy through the 1920s, the slide into the Great Depression was already starting for farmers and agribusinesses. Historians consider the first two decades of the 20th century as prosperous times for agriculture, but fewer than one out of three U.S. farms netted more than $1,500 in 1928 – and that would turn out to be a high point. |