Core Historical Literature of Agriculture
About this collection
The Core Historical Literature of Agriculture (CHLA) collection contains landmark agricultural texts published between the early nineteenth century and the middle to late twentieth century. The collection covers agricultural economics, agricultural engineering, animal science, crops and their protection, food science, forestry, human nutrition, rural sociology, and soil science. Teams of scholars selected the titles in this collection for their historical and scientific importance.
Digitization of this collection began in 1994, at a time when scanning and digitizing was a very expensive preservation technology. Mann Library worked with scholars in the field to identify the most important publications in the agricultural sciences between 1850 and 1950 in order to prioritize which volumes to digitize first.
Historical context
United States history cannot fully be understood without studying its rural life and agricultural heritage. Agriculture fueled the social and economic engine which built our nation, which generated our state and local governments, which stimulated and regulated pioneering, farming, land tenure, and the trading of agricultural commodities. Much of what defines the national character of Americans, our cultural values and morés, is rooted in our agrarian past. The farm family was the basic social unit molding American life for nearly 200 years. Agriculture has transformed the American countryside and provided its rural strength.
The story of American agriculture is captured in a broad band of documentary resources ranging from the memoirs and transactions of early agriculture societies to newspapers and almanacs; family, community, and corporate archives; and state and county extension service publications. As rural life changed, so did the content of the literature aimed at the farm family. These materials document the experience of the individual farm family, the establishment and evolution of farm communities, the pressures affecting rural culture, and the shifting and evolution in rural culture in response to national and world events. During the 19th century, the farm unit shifted its orientation from the family and the immediate community to the market, and to the expanding urban-industrial society. For nearly 100 years, employment in the American agricultural and food system remained nearly constant at about 35 million while the population soared. With these changing demographics came shifts in attitudes about rural life, community and family values, and the management of the farm enterprise. These shifts had a profound effect on farm families, on rural communities, and on the economy of the nation.
The historical literature of agriculture chronicles the beginning of an era in which the pressures of population and the opportunities of urban and global markets resulted in an agricultural system which is arguably the most productive in the world, but which is also a major contributor to environmental degradation. Until the 1940s, farmers did not use pesticides and chemical fertilizers in quantity. The record of pre-World War II agriculture is almost entirely a literature of what we now call "alternative" sustainable agricultural methods, observations, production, and effects. These materials also chronicle the history of the environmental and agricultural worker's rights movements, and the rise of the land conservation ethic.
Using the collection
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For questions about this collection, please contact mann-ref@cornell.edu.
More information
- Collection steward
- Michael Cook, Environmental Studies Curator
- Metadata creation
- Cornell University Library
- Funding
- Class of 1956 gift (College of Agriculture & Life Sciences Challenge); College of Agriculture & Life Sciences Office for Research; National Agriculture Library (NAL); National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH); The Rockefeller Foundation; United States Agricultural Information Network (USAIN); United States Department of Agriculture (USDA); United States Department of Education, Title IIC
- Credits
- This collection overview was prepared from text on the original website of the Core Historical Literature of Agriculture and last updated in 2025.
- Collection sources