During the Progressive era, an urban-agrarian wing of the conservation movement made soil fertility a highly salient issue in the press. This article examines the extent and causes of a convergence of urban-agrarian concern between 1907 and 1916, which was one of the first sustainable agriculture policy networks in United States history. Businessmen and journalists helped put soil fertility on the national policy agenda. Existing institutions, such as the United States Department of Agriculture, were not considered adequate guardians of the food supply for an expanding industrial nation. Urban agrarians financed and managed soil fertility propaganda and agrarian legislative campaigns based on the recognition that existing institutions lacked the resources necessary to convert traditional farmers to the emerging scientific, soil-preserving paradigm. In an era punctuated by debate over the rising cost of living, the new agriculture was known to many in the movement simply as “businesslike” farming.
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