Kane Farm Bureau marks century of helping farmers — and some city folks, too

• Reprints

Joe White loads a truck full of soybeans Thursday to deliver from the White farm in Elburn. February 2, 2012 | Michael Smart~Sun-Times Media

CELEBRATIONS STILL BEING PLANNED

Exactly how the Kane County Farm Bureau will celebrate its 100th birthday is still somewhat uncertain. A committee started planning the celebration just last week. But President Joe White and spokesman Ryan Klassy said the events likely will include:

— A display of memorabilia from the century in the lobby of the farm bureau’s office, adjacent to the Kane County Fairgrounds along Randall Road.

— Articles, photos and even puzzles about the past will be published in the bureau’s monthly newspaper, Kane County Farmer.

— Metal farm bureau gate signs may be made available.

— Contests and free offers each month.

— A hundred by 100 membership drive, hoping to boost the membership by 100 people.

— The usual Harvest Picnic in the late summer.

Article Extras

Updated: March 8, 2012 8:08AM

When the Kane County Farm Bureau started out a century ago, 80-year-old John White Jr. says, most county residents were farmers.

But their lives were drastically different from that of farmers today, or even from those of the city folk of their day.

The biggest differences were transportation and communications, White says. There was no radio or TV to bring the outside world to the farm, and no electricity to run those if they had existed.

Milking and even the pumping of water had to be done by hand. Few really understood the scientific ways of growing more crops on the same amount of land, or of breeding livestock that produced more meat or milk from the same amount of feed.

Unpaved roads that turned into muddy morasses inhibited travel even to nearby towns. Plank Road between Elgin and Sycamore was called that because it was one of the rare roads to be paved — with wooden boards.

When the farmer took his meat and milk and eggs to market, he found himself at the mercy of what milk dealers and meat packers wanted to pay.

So in December 1912, 32 men led by three Elgin-area agri-businessmen formed what they originally called the Kane County Farm Improvement Association.

They decided there was a better way to do things — the right way,”says White, a Batavia-area grain farmer who has served lengthy terms as president of both the county farm bureau and the Illinois Farm Bureau. White’s son, 56-year-old Elburn-area grain farmer Joe White, is the current president of the county bureau.

Early goals

The organization’s official goals originally included showing farmers better ways of soil management and animal husbandry; lobbying for better rural roads; and“to improve the social and educational interests of the farm communities of Kane County.

“Many of our programs are still the same,””said Joe White. “Market access for farm product, examining government regulations and just getting together with fellow farmers of like mind.””

Today, John White said, the Kane bureau has about 1,000 members who are active farmers. But it also has 14,000 associate”members, who live in the city but have joined the bureau to take advantage of such services as Country Mutual Insurance Co.

Besides education, research and political lobbying, these nonprofit economic enterprises “have always been a major part of the bureau’s mission,” John White said.

“In the old days, insurance agents had offices in the city and they didn’t’think it was worth riding a horse through the mud out to some farm in Elburn to sell a $1.50 fire insurance or life insurance policy. So we formed the Country Companies to provide insurance to farm bureau members, and today that’s a Fortune 500 company, headquartered in Bloomington.””

Similarly, he said, the farm bureaus started the Prairie Farm Dairy, a farmer-owned company designed to buy milk from farmers and get it to market without the sellers being robbed by greedy private dairies; and the Gro-Mark System, a co-op that combines farmers’ buying power to buy supplies as cheaply as possible.

The Big Three

The first board of directors consisted of two farmers from each of the county’s 16 townships. But the three men who submitted the articles of incorporation to the state in 1912 are believed to have all been from the Elgin area. And in at least two cases, they seem to have become somewhat citified already.

It is believed that the first president. Judson P. Mason, owned a farm in what is now the Gilberts area and was from the family that inspired the name of Mason Road.

The other two main founders were the first two board members from Elgin Township. According to Courier-News records, Edwin W. Wing was a 53-year-old brother of William H. Wing and had grown up with William on a large farm that spanned what is now Wing Street on Elgin’s northwest side.

Edwin Wing’s 1951 obituary in The Courier-News notes he became interested”in the management of the Kerber Packing Co. in Elgin and in 1915 he founded the Parkside Dairy.

The third founder, Harry D. Barnes, was born on a farm in Bloomingdale in 1863. In 1883 the Barnes family moved to Elgin.

The book “Kane County History,” published just a year before the bureau was founded, states that Barnes was president and main owner of the Elgin Packing Co., a canning plant at West Chicago and Union streets. The plant produced more than a million cans of sweet corn a year, plus pumpkins and beans. The book says Barnes then lived in the city, at 225 Hamilton Ave., but he continued also to own a dairy farm at“McQueen Station,”between Elgin and Pingree Grove.

Other leaders

In 1916, leaders of 13 similar county groups met at the University of Illinois and formed an Illinois Farm Bureau, also known as the Illinois Agricultural Association. A nationwide American Farm Bureau Federation followed in 1919, and that year the local group changed its name to Kane County Farm Bureau.

For much of its history, the Kane bureau elected a different president every year. But lately, the top people have tended to serve multiple terms. John White’s term from 1968-1973 was followed by Mike Kenyon of South Elgin for eight years, Bob Gehrke of Elgin for six years and Joe White since 2010.

In John White’s case, his leadership went on to higher levels and became a full-time job. He was elected vice president of the Illinois Farm Bureau from 1973-1983 and president of the state bureau from 1983-1993, leaving son Joe to work his fields back in Kane County. John White said that state bureau experience brought him face to face with seven U.S. presidents.

“As one of the top spokesmen for Midwest farmers, I worked with six presidents and met them all,” John White said. “My favorite was George H.W. (Bush). He and I became pretty close. During his time as vice president (under Ronald Reagan), loan rates were 24 percent and that was killing the farmers. We took 750,000 petitions to Washington and dropped them on Vice President Bush’s desk, and after that we kept in touch.””

Joe White said the issues the county and state bureaus have lobbied for in more recent times have included changing Illinois’ system for assessing farmland for property tax purposes and pressuring county officials to preserve unincorporated areas in western Kane County for farm use rather than large-lot houses.

Until a few decades ago, Joe White noted, farmland was taxed based on its potential sales value. As cities like Elgin expanded and developers bid for raw land, that made nearby farmers’ tax bills huge and tended to force them to sell out to developers. But now the tax assessment is based on how much the land can earn if it stays in use as farmland.

“We were also big proponents of the Stormwater System Preservation Act, passed in the 1980s, which keeps developers from blocking drainage-tile systems serving nearby farms,”” Joe White said.

“We also educate people about farm safety,” Farm Bureau spokesman Ryan Klassy said, “from warning drivers to watch out for slow-moving tractors on the highway to reminding farmers to be careful when they step inside grain bins or manure tanks. We have a Farm Safety Day each year for kids.””