A tip of the hat to George Washington Carver and his lengthy legacy
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George Washington Carver by Betsy Graves Reyneau, 1942
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution;
gift of the George Washington Carver Memorial Committee 2008 Smithsonian Institution |
When Iowa's legislature accepted the provisions of the Morrill Act of 1862 and conferred land-grant status to Iowa State—then known as Iowa Agricultural College and Model Farm, they created an institution where a gifted but disadvantaged student like George Washington Carver was able to flourish. Carver, the institution's first African American student and faculty member, completed his undergraduate degree in 1894 and his master's of agriculture in 1896.
Persuaded by Booker T Washington, founder of the 'Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute for Negroes' in Tuskegee, Alabama, Carver became director of agriculture for the then fourteen-year-old school.
What Carver witnessed in 1897 upon his arrival in Tuskegee was a rural economy completely dependent upon the market price of cotton. Farmers living in poverty were growing only cotton, depleting the soil and giving nothing back.
“No flower or vegetable gardens, nothing being canned and no paint on the houses,” explains Iowa State's G.W. Carver scholar, Harold S. “Sande” McNabb, Jr., University Professor emeritus in the Departments of Plant Pathology, and Natural Resource Ecology and Management. And because cotton could not be eaten by the farmers who grew it, the concept of saving some back to eat did not exist.
“There he saw a holistic problem—not just one thing wrong,” says McNabb. “And the peanut was the vehicle he could use to begin a change.”
Carver pioneered crop rotation practices, advocating growing peanuts to return nitrogen to the soil and later introduced soil enriching sweet potatoes, cow peas, soybeans and tomatoes for food. He developed paints from clay and encouraged people to grow flowers to beautify and enhance their homes.
Carver further expanded crop uses by developing industrials such as plant derived milk, soy ink, paper, soap, glue, dyes, massage oil from peanuts and cosmetics, most of which he never cared to patent.
Using an old mule-drawn-wagon borrowed from the Tuskegee school, that later evolved into his Jesup Agricultural Wagon (named for Morris K. Jesup, who provided the funds for Carver to build the vehicle) Carver went out with demonstrations in-hand to visit farmers in the surrounding rural communities. He traveled on Sundays so as to capture the post church service gatherings, explains McNabb. Carver brought along soil testing equipment, recipes, canning instructions and new produce for community members to try.
In Carver's time as a student, traditional education in the United States focused on a lecture-only style of teaching. “But Iowa State was the first institution in the U.S. to allow undergraduates to use microscopes in the laboratories,” says McNabb—not just for research projects but to discover things on their own.
Carver brought this style—the idea of discovery by students with him to Tuskegee, making field work, ecology trips, and outings with the Jesup Wagon central to his courses. The success of this teaching method brought applied research in agriculture to the forefront.
Carver has been inspiring students—including McNabb who was first exposed to Carver's work in the fifth grade--for well over a century.
“Iowa State represents what Carver was all about,” says McNabb, a shining example of the Land Grant college system, championing the extension role to the research and education system.
From `king cotton' to `king corn'--would this distinguished Iowa State alumnus and champion of the holistic approach to agriculture and problem solving have approved of our current agricultural practices?
“I think he would question the way agriculture is done in Iowa today,” says McNabb. “But I think he would applaud the molecular biology work.”
McNabb offers this assessment because of corn's dominant profile on our current landscape. “We've been cloning plants since the dark ages,” says McNabb. “But I think Carver would attempt to moderate, to caution—maintain some diversity in what is planted.”
Today's amber waves still encompass a crop that puts little if anything back into the soil, creating the potential for a scenario similar to the one Carver set about rectifying in rural Tuskegee, Alabama over a hundred years ago.
What Carver, a keen observer recognized so long ago is as true today as it was then. Economic health, individual happiness, weather, climate, the soil and the price of crops go hand-in-hand.
