Abstract

This article highlights Colorado Cooperative Extension Service (CCES) employee A. J. Hamman to demonstrate how Extension employees began acting as intermediaries between farmers and the federal government in the face of the Great Depression and Dust Bowl. The dual crises forced both farmers and the state to adapt, and the Extension Service facilitated a variety of reforms. For example, Hamman and his colleagues executed federal policy by working with farmers, combining local initiative and federal largesse to promote production controls as well as to establish a wide-ranging conservation program that continued well beyond the 1930s. This cooperation between Colorado farmers and Washington, DC, policymakers gained strength during the war years when extension provided farmers a diverse and sizable army of seasonal workers to support wartime production. Ultimately, the CCES bolstered Colorado farmers during some of their worst years and in the process profoundly altered the agricultural economy and landscape of southeastern Colorado.

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