Andrew Boss "Heritage Northwest"

In 1976 radio station WWCO in Waco, Texas had a series of programs on "Heritage Northwest".  In looking through a photograph album I found the script for the program they did about Andrew Boss, my grandfather.


"During the late 1880's a young man from Minnesota tried to find a way for more farmers to make more money.  First, he said, they had to keep better records.  They also needed more advise on matching the best crop with their soil and weather and pocketbook.  He tried setting up small farm plots at the University of Minnesota's agricultural experiment station.  The project was a pioneer effort in crop rotation.  It failed.  So the young man tried it with real farmers.  He would pick them from three test areas around the state.  One little problem.  Some of the farmers did not trust this university "book" farmer.  Some were afraid he was gathering information to use against them....perhaps to increase their property taxes.


This man's career covered 50 years of agriculture in Minnesota.  In the 1880's when he came to the University of Minnesota there were about 7,200,000 acres under cultivation in the state.  In the 1930's when he retired there were close to 31,000,000.  He did not have a college degree, and yet his research in agriculture touched crop rotation, animal husbandry, agronomy, plant pathology, meats and farm management.


Andrew Boss was born the oldest of 11 children to parents of Scotch ancestry in Minnesota's Wabasha County, 1867, Gillford Township. He drove a plow and harrow at age 10, enrolled at the University's agriculture school in 1889.  Two years later he was named foreman of the university's agriculture experiment station, started only four years earlier.  He apparently was not impressed.  'The more I see of these professors,' he wrote, 'the more I think talk is all they amount to."


It was not long before Andy Boss was doing pioneer work in the science of breeding plants, when few people thought much of cross-breeding and inbreeding varieties of seeds.  His research laid some of the groundwork for many varieties that resist disease.  He was one of the first to take a serious interest in the feeding and management of livestock.  "It has been a maxim of  scientists", wrote Andy Boss, "that animals adapt themselves to their environment only gradually and then begin to grow strong.  We have here our own conditions.  Why not have breeds of American stock, for Americans?"


It was said that Andy Boss could stroll around a farm and then with what seemed just a few questions, judge the quality of the operation, point to the problem areas.  His plan to measure farm profits and planting decisions eventually took hold in three areas: Northfield, Marshall, and Halsted.  After a while most of those skeptical farmers came to see Andy Boss as one of them.


Andy Boss liked to say he was on the payroll at the University every month from October 1889 through 1936.  He came to the university husking corn for ten cents an hour.... he left as a respected chairman of the department of animal husbandry.  He died in 1947.  "I have in my veins," wrote Andy Boss, "the blood of my forebears, who were attracted to America by a desire to own a piece of land.  That desire is strong in me. and may bias my views, but I am firm in my conviction that a permanently satisfactory agriculture must be built upon the family unit."