Many historians have called Benjamin Franklin an agricultural leader in young America. Here’s a glimpse into why.
Benjamin Franklin lived primarily in the city, but he also had an affinity for agriculture and farm life. And, after he retired from his printing business in 1748, he purchased a farm in New Jersey. Historians have documented that Franklin “turned [his farm]…into a sort of miniature experiment station, carrying on projects in…crop rotation, and especially in the utilization of the newer grasses and the liming and fertilization.” As a respected man of letters and a renowned polymath, it should thereby come as no surprise that this Founding Father is also known for having introduced various new agricultural products to the American colonies.
For instance, Franklin was one of the first supporters for starting a silk industry on American soil. A letter he penned to Philadelphia’s Dr. Cadwallader Evans has been cited as stating how the mulberry tree — from which silkworms spin their silk — would be well-suited to the American colonies’ climate and soils. Franklin went on to explain his position: “[M]ulberry trees may be planted in hedgerows on walks or avenues, or for shade near a house, where nothing else is wanted to grow. The food for the worms, which produce the silk, is in the air, and the ground under the trees may still produce grass, or some other vegetable good for man or beast. Then the wear of silken garments continues so much longer, from the strength of the materials, as to give it greatly the preference…”
Franklin was also notable for having introduced native plants from the United States to those across the Atlantic in Europe. Similarly, he brought European plants to America for farm cultivation. Some agricultural produce that Franklin introduced to the United States included Swiss barley, Chinese rhubarb, Scotch kale, and kohlrabi (click here for the resource). Then, too, several farming forums and media channels have in fact celebrated how Franklin had sent rhubarb seeds and Scottish cabbage seeds to the colonies.
There are those who argue that while Franklin is widely seen as a diplomat, he should also be viewed as an agricultural agent who helped promote American agriculture. Amongst Franklin’s best lines on agriculture were: (1) “The great business of the continent is agriculture,” and (2) “Land being thus plenty in America, and so cheap as that a labouring man, that understands husbandry, can in a short time save money enough to purchase a piece of new land sufficient for a plantation, whereon he may subsist a family…” For Franklin, the young America was a boon of agricultural resources, which was why Franklin thought of farming and agriculture as a business that should be approached with science to make it a prosperous way of living.
Undeniably, Franklin was known for his writings. He printed several books on botany and agriculture, to say the least. In a 1759 proposal to the Philadelphia Academy, there is an instance where Franklin expressed his fondness for the science and practice of agriculture: “While they are reading Natural History, might not a little Gardening, Planting, Grafting, Inoculating, etc., be taught and practiced; and now and then Excursions made to the neighbouring Plantations of the best Farmers, their methods observ’d and reason’d upon for the information of Youth?”
Further contributions that Franklin made to American agriculture were his encouragement of the implementation of crop insurance as well as the education he provided to further the use of gypsum as a type of fertilizer. To read up on Franklin being a pioneer in the use of gypsum as a fertilizer, click here. Moreover, Franklin was an advocate for the founding of the American Philosophical Society, an organization that had amongst its purposes the objective to share information on progress and developments in agriculture.
But perhaps what is even more intriguing is that Franklin is recognized by gastronomy specialists as a “Founding Foodie.” That is thanks to Franklin being depicted as “one of the original food lovers” of the young United States. This is not just because of his Poor Richard’s Almanack aphorism of “An apple a day keeps the doctor away.” Rather, it stems from his having introduced both soybeans and tofu to the colonies as well. Indeed, the oldest continuously run tavern in the United States, namely Philadelphia’s City Tavern, serves Fried Tofu as an homage to Franklin’s famous January 11, 1770 correspondence to John Bartram, wherein he shares: “Father Navarrete’s account of the universal use of a cheese made of them [soybeans] in China, which so excited my curiosity… I have since learned that some runnings of salt (I suppose runnet) is put into water, when the meal is in it, to turn it to curds… These… are what the Tau-fu is made of.” Learn more here.
In all, it cannot be denied that Benjamin Franklin had a high regard for the farmer and for the farmer’s integral role in the livelihood of the nation. This is best demonstrated by Franklin’s description of agriculture as being “the only honest way, wherein man receives a real increase of the seed thrown into the ground in the kind of continual miracle, wrought by the hand of God in his favor, as a reward for his innocent life and his virtuous industry.”
Founding Father Benjamin Franklin’s Influence on American Agriculture
