nd congressmen
and agricultural leaders in the North who had observed the success of
the county agent movement in the South commenced to feel that county
agricultural agents might be equally valuable in the North as a means of
local agricultural education. As a result, the first county agricultural
agents in the North were appointed by the Office of Farm Management of
the U. S. Department of Agriculture in 1910 and 1911. In 1912, 113 were
employed in cooperation with the state agricultural colleges and local
county organizations in the North and West. The success of the work of
these agents and of the extension work of the agricultural colleges led
to a general demand from the agricultural interests of the country for a
federal appropriation to the agricultural colleges for establishing a
system of extension work the chief feature of which would be the
employment of county agricultural agents who would supervise field
demonstrations by the farmers on their own farms. This resulted in the
federal Smith-Lever Act of 1914, which made an annual appropriation to
each land-grant college "to aid in diffusing among the people of the
United States useful and practical information on agriculture and home
economics and to encourage the application of the same ... through field
demonstrations, publications, and otherwise, ... to persons not
attending or resident at said college." This act is notable in that it
established the most comprehensive national system of non-resident
instruction in agriculture and home economics of any country, and
recognized the necessity of de-centralizing this instruction by having
it carried on by agents in the counties who could have immediate and
continuous contact with individual farmers and groups of farmers.

As the work of the county agents in the South grew more permanent they
found that it was more efficient if they worked with and through local
groups of farmers, and community agricultural clubs were quite widely
organized, but no strong county federation was developed, except in West
Virginia, where the local clubs formed a county organization which was
called a Farm Bureau. The term Farm Bureau originated in Broome County,
New York, in 1911, when the first county agent in that state was
employed by the Binghamton Chamber of Commerce, the Lackawanna Railroad,
and the U. S. Department of Agriculture. As the number of county agents
rapidly increased in the northern states it soon became apparent