{"id":10227,"date":"2014-05-05T09:48:48","date_gmt":"2014-05-05T13:48:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/creative.clemson.edu\/clemsonworld\/?p=10227"},"modified":"2014-05-05T09:48:48","modified_gmt":"2014-05-05T13:48:48","slug":"agricultural-revolutionary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/agricultural-revolutionary\/","title":{"rendered":"An agricultural revolutionary"},"content":{"rendered":"

Interred in a shady plot along the periphery of Woodland Cemetery \u2014 a short punt from Death Valley and a pebble\u2019s throw from Clemson family names like Sikes, Poole and R.C. Edwards \u2014 lie the earthly remains of one of the most influential Americans whose name you may have never heard.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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\n\"Frank<\/p><\/div>
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Asbury Francis Lever \u2014 Frank to family, friends and constituents alike \u2014 was born on a family farm near Spring Hill in Lexington County on a winter day in 1875. Within 40 years the South Carolina farm boy would transform agriculture in the United States. All it took was a stroke of a pen and a vision for the future.
\nAs a South Carolina congressman, Frank Lever \u2014 a Clemson life trustee \u2014 would team with Sen. Hoke Smith of Georgia to author a bill that would carry both their names. The Smith-Lever Act, which became law May 8, 1914, authorized the Cooperative Extension Service, in which federal, state and county governments cooperate to extend research-based science from land-grant universities like Clemson to working people who could apply it.
\nThe concept wasn\u2019t new to Lever. He had seen it at work before in his native state in the tomato demonstration clubs of the Lowcountry and in the trains that took Clemson professors across the state to teach farmers and their families the best practices for growing crops, preserving food and safeguarding the land.
\n\u201cAs early as 1905, Clemson was publishing a weekly fertilizer bulletin and mailing it to 12,000 farmers and agricultural businesses,\u201d Clemson President Jim Clements reminded county agents and Extension specialists at their annual meeting in December. \u201cSpecial Extension trains took faculty members throughout the state.
\n\u201cWhat happened a hundred years ago was transformational for the country,\u201d he said. \u201cThe Clemson model became the national model.\u201d
\n\u201cThe county agent is to assume leadership in every movement, whatever it may be, the aim of which is better farming, more education, better living, more happiness and greater citizenship,\u201d he said in floor debate on the bill. \u201cYou cannot make the farmer change the methods which have been sufficient to earn a livelihood for himself and his family for many years unless you show him, under his own vine and fig tree as it were, that you have a system better than the system which he himself has been following.\u201d
\nExtension was established the same year World War I broke out in Europe. It immediately went to work to help farmers increase the production of crops essential to the war effort. In the century since, the revolutionary concept of extending university-based knowledge to working people resulted in Lever\u2019s \u201crevolution\u201d in crop yields. An acre that grew 24 bushels of corn in 1911 will harvest, on average, six times as much today. Extension continues to deliver research-based education in agriculture, natural resources, food safety and nutrition, economic and community development, and 4-H youth development.
\nToday, as in Frank Lever\u2019s day, agriculture is the state\u2019s largest industry. And thanks to Lever\u2019s legacy, the next century looks just as bright.
\nFrank Lever photo: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, photograph by Harris & Ewing, [reproduction number, e.g., LC-USZ62-123456]<\/small><\/p><\/div><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Interred in a shady plot along the periphery of Woodland Cemetery \u2014 a short punt from Death Valley and a pebble\u2019s throw from Clemson family names like Sikes, Poole and R.C. Edwards \u2014 lie the earthly remains of one of the most influential Americans whose name you may have never heard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":10260,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[132,1145,1315,1508,2628,2691],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-10227","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-landmarks-legends","tag-agriculture","tag-extension","tag-frank-lever","tag-hoke-smith","tag-smith-lever-act","tag-spring-2014"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2014\/05\/frank-lever-e1399036148766.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10227","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10227"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10227\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10227"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=10227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}