I am shown here watching Dan box-up my collection of USDA Ag Yearbooks. The books were published from 1894 through 1993. Dan's wife also helped by recording on the boxes the years it contained. The books are, on average, 400-page-long, color-photo illustrated, hardback annual reports on agriculture that were mailed out by farm state lawmakers to their constituents. They were written by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and published by the U.S. Government Printing Office until 1993 when the house Ag Appropriations Subcommittee won authority to discontinue production. I began my collection soon after starting to work for the USDA Soil Conservation Service in 1948.
The books on Soils, Water, Trees and Grasses were my favorites, but they were all useful back in the printed media days. They became a hot item on eBay which is how I was able to complete my collection some years ago. I even traded up in several instances to improve the quality of the book for a specific year and also sent some as far away as to France. This collection is going into storage but will eventually be a part of a Hugh Hammond Bennett Memorial (The founder of the Soil Conservation Service) on the Innovative Campus of the University of Nebraska at Lincoln.
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