AMADOR COUNTY FARM BUREAU

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"It's up to us to organize. No one can do it for us. See to it that your Farm Center endorses the State Federation at its next meeting. If the farmer does not demand a square deal no one is going to do it for him."

A few weeks after those words appeared in the September 1919 edition of the Monterey County Farm Bureau Monthly, delegates from 32 county Farm Bureaus met in Berkeley to create the California Farm Bureau Federation.

The fledgling organization, with a combined membership of 24, 168, elected Dr. W.H. Walker of Willows as its first president and occupied two rooms within Hilgard Hall on the University of California campus in Berkeley.

The university and its Agricultural Extension Service prompted the founding of the Farm Bureau movement in California.

Created by Congress in 1914, the extension service operated through the nation's land grant colleges, including UC. Before extension staff could bring the service's education programs to a county, the service was required to establish a farm organization within the county. That guaranteed a channel through which county farm advisors and extension specialists could reach individual farmers and their families. A county Farm Bureau representing at least 20 percent of the farmers in the county had to be operating before a farm advisor could be appointed for the county.

The first California county to qualify was Humboldt, which formed its Farm Bureau in 1913. The following year, Yolo, San Joaquin and San Diego counties founded their Farm Bureaus.

B.H. Crocheron, the founder of California's Agricultural Extension Service, promoted the formation of county Farm Bureaus and, eventually, the state organization as well. In a circular written in 1917, he envisioned the county Farm Bureau acting as "a sort of rural chamber of commerce and... the guardian of rural affairs. It can take the lead in agitation for good roads, for better schools, and for cheaper methods of buying and selling."