In the early 1900's, once-rich farmland across Illinois was beginning to lose the nutrients needed to grow the common crops of the day -- oats, wheat and alfalfa. Many farmers didn't know about crop rotation and soil management; but Henry Parke understood, and he joined several of his farming friends on Christmas Day in 1911 to set about bringing this information to their colleagues across DeKalb County.
This marked the birth of the DeKalb County Soil Improvement Association, which today is known as the DeKalb County Farm Bureau; its current manager, Greg Millburg, says the organization set out to help improve the tilth of the soil in this county, and bit by bit grew its services to accommodate the growing array of needs that farmers required as they moved through the 20th Century, and into the new millenium.
The original organization eventually split off into the Extension Service and the Farm Bureau; the latter represents hundreds of persons involved in farming and agriculture-related fields, and helps to give the farmers of today access to the information they need to maintain productive crops.
Millburg says even with the influx of population into DeKalb County, 88 percent of the owned property within its borders is devoted to farming and ag; and our county still maintains some of the richest soil in the world -- which means that agribusiness will continue to remain vital to the economic growth of the area.