At the turn of the previous century, growing concern over the quality of life for rural Americans prompted President Theodore Roosevelt to appoint a Commission on Country Life in 1908. One of the direct outcomes of the Commission’s recommendations was the passage of the Smith-Lever Act in 1914, which established a national extension service to place the knowledge generated at land-grant universities into the hands of farmers and rural citizens. Beginning in 1913, the Agriculture Extension Service, later known as UC Cooperative Extension, placed farm advisors employed by the University of California in every county that formed a farm bureau and agreed to sponsor Extension Service work. The University of California Cooperative Extension Records for San Diego County span the years 1915-1949. The records are comprised of documents related to farm advisory projects conducted throughout the county. Project topics include, but are not limited to, Farm Bureau Defense Programs, farm advisor demonstrations for farm management, beekeeping, crop trials, septic tanks, as well as projects about fertilizers, crop improvement and variety trials, disease control, and turkey cost studies. The collection is arranged numerically by project number.
