Agricultural Reform and State Activism
Agricultural Reform and State Activism
This chapter highlights how Ruffin and other reformers championed legislative action to promote agricultural experimentation and education. These individuals believed that state governments should subsidize experimental farms, agricultural professorships, geological surveys, agricultural societies, and farm journals to disseminate new knowledge. To complement state educational efforts, some reformers also advocated important changes in property law to encourage the drainage of swamps and to prevent the spread of malaria. In their calls for state action, reformers combined scientific reasoning, economic rationalism, and romantic imagery. The rhetoric of southern agricultural reformers, synthesizing both the modern and the traditional, viewed state support for agricultural research as the hallmark of civilized government. For all its rhetorical and intellectual energy, the reform movement generally failed to transform southern agriculture in the ways that reformers desired.
Keywords: Ruffin, reformers, legislative action, agricultural experimentation, experimental farms, new knowledge
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