New England Research Council on Marketing and Food Supply Records

Background on New England Research Council on Marketing and Food Supply

The New England Research Council on Marketing and Food Supply was established in April 1922 after Lloyd S. Tenny of the U.S. Bureau of Agricultural Economics disclosed that federal funds would become available for research in marketing. Tenny requested that an advisory council be organized to prevent duplication of research, and the resulting organization was charged with attempting "to stimulate and coordinate the studies of economic problems connected with the supply of foods and other agricultural products of New England." Prominent among the early members of the Council were representatives from the Massachusetts Agricultural College, including President Kenyon Butterfield and the head of the Department of Agricultural Economics, Alexander E. Cance.

Throughout its thirty-three year existence, the Research Council played a role in supporting and coordinating research for agricultural marketing and production. At various times, the Council sponsored annual conferences on the regional outlook and occasional meetings on individual commodities, and they sponsored a New England crop reporting service, a New England radio news service, and opportunities for professional improvement. Having weathered the Depression years, however, the council found itself "overshadowed," as a history of the organization suggested, by the products of the Research and Marketing Act of 1946, and between 1946 and 1955, the Council's Executive Director split time between the Research Council and a number of regional and interregional projects.

In 1955, the Council reorganized after USDA support for the Executive Secretary was terminated. A subsequent organization, the New England Agricultural Economics Council was formed with representation from each of the six state universities in the region, carrying out a broadly similar mission.