This spring, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History is reaching out to farmers, ranchers and American agri-business to build a collection that reflects modern agricultural practices. Curators are seeking stories, photographs and ephemera to record and preserve the innovations and experiences of farming and ranching.
In partnership with AFBF, the museum representatives announced the initiative to the farming community during AFBF’s 94th Annual Meeting. The first donation came from Tennessee Farm Bureau member Pat Campbell, of Cleburne Jersey Farm, a multigenerational dairy farm founded in the 1870s in Spring Hill, Tenn. Campbell donated a selection of photographs, a computer cow tag and reader unit to show the change in dairying from a hand-labor intensive process to a modern computer-run operation.
