Ag's History

The history of agriculture with emphasis on American business and history is part of new exhibit set to open in 2015 at the Smithsonian's Museum of American History according to Peter Liebhold, curator of the new exhibit.

LIEBHOLD: In the exhibition that we're developing couches agriculture in a new light as a business story and we're looking at five big economic sectors; agriculture of course, manufacturing, retail and service, IT and communication and finally finance. And our argument is that agriculture can't be separated from any of those.

He explains some details of the upcoming "American Enterprise" exhibit. 

LIEBHOLD: We can show visitors to the museum how agriculture has changed from those old horse drawn plow days to today where we have combines with yield monitors and GPS units that are really making us more productive. The exhibition itself is chronological in approach so it's doing the history of the country from the 1770's up until today divided into 4 big eras.

talks about the "American Innovation and Heritage Archive" as a way to solicit interactive participation in the upcoming "American Enterprise" exhibit. 

LIEBHOLD: Times are changing for farmers and times are changing for curators and we need to get with the program and computers are certainly the way to be involved and we can reach more people through the internet than we could reach by going out and talking to folks one-on-one.

That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.