Illinois Ag Across Time: Episode 2

We often think of agriculture's great innovations as coming from major companies like John Deere or Case New Holland but some of the most important ideas in farming history came straight from the farm itself. In this episode, Don Meyer highlights what he calls "farmer innovators" or everyday farm families who looked at a problem and figured out a better way right on the farm.

Take the Fuller family. Lester Fuller (Gene Fuller and his sons still farm today), found a way to modify an older corn picker by adding a shelling unit allowing them to pick and shell corn right in the field. Company representatives actually came out to their farm to see the innovation in action. That two-unit system would eventually evolve into the self-propelled combine that a single farmer operates today.

Then there's the story of John Lockenvitz, a McLean County farmer who is believed to have built the very first gravity flow wagon — the side-delivery wagon that became a staple of grain farming in the 1970s and 80s. His original wooden wagon is now preserved at a museum in Clinton, Illinois. Unfortunately, he didn't patent his idea in time, and other companies ran with it.

These stories are a reminder that agricultural innovation has always been a two-way street that is driven as much by the ingenuity of farmers in their own shops as by the engineering teams of major manufacturers. Watch the full episode below.

Illinois Ag Across Time is a video series created in honor of America's 250th Anniversary, tracing nearly 200 years of agricultural history through the people who lived it. This video was filmed in McLean County Museum of History based on their Farming in the Great Corn Belt exhibit which was co-curated by Don Meyer and Susan K. Hartzold.