Political Quotes

“today I wish to congratulate the U.S. Department of Agriculture on 150 years of service to the people of America. On this day in 1862, President Abraham Lincoln created the Bureau of Agriculture and with it, America's commitment to an abundant supply of food and fiber. Lincoln grew up on a farm, and he understood the long hours of hard work that men and women like his parents spent working the land. Farming in those days was a very different proposition--much of the work was done by hand or animal labor. He rightly called it the People's Department because 90 percent of Americans at the time worked, like his folks, on farms. Lincoln created the USDA at a time of great change in agriculture. Machinery was being introduced that lessened the workload and made farming more efficient. Families were heading westward and expanding the frontier. It was only 5 days later that Lincoln signed another important law that would have a dramatic effect on the future of agriculture in this country: the Homestead Act. That same year, Lincoln would also sign the law creating the Transcontinental Railroad, as well as the Land Grant Colleges Act, which has special meaning for me as a Michigan State University graduate. But here is the most amazing thing: he did all of this during some of the worst fighting of the Civil War. When he put pen to paper to create the Bureau of Agriculture, there had already been more than 100,000 casualties in the Civil War.…”