Agriculture and Commerce, Department of

The fiscal-year (July-June) report of the Mississippi Department of Agriculture and Commerce (MDAC) summarizes the agency's efforts to promote Mississippi's agricultural industry and to regulate laws governing on-farm production, processing, and retail markets. The Department of Archives and History has electronic (PDF) copies of the report from 1997.

This scrapbook documents a milk quality improvement campaign in Mississippi, focusing on Booneville and Macon, including numerous newspaper clippings from the Booneville Banner, the Booneville Independent, the Tupelo Daily Journal, and the Macon Beacon. The campaign was a coordinated effort of the Kraft Food Company and the Mississippi Department of Agriculture and targeted dairy farmers who supplied milk to Kraft's Mississippi dairy plants. Thirty-three black-and-white and color photographs document problems in dairy production as well as state efforts to improve milk quality. Images include dairy farm families and workers; milk trucks and milk carts loaded with milk cans; dairy buildings; classroom scenes of milk quality improvement courses taught to dairy farmers; and dairy cattle.

These state documents were published by the Mississippi Department of Agriculture and Commerce and previously archived as broadsides.

This 30 minute promotional film from around 1970 surveys Mississippi agriculture with a focus on how Mississippi farmers are using modern technologies and techniques to increase their yields and produce superior results. The film includes brief descriptions of various kinds of animal husbandry (e.g., cattle, poultry, hogs, catfish) and crop husbandry (e.g., cotton, soybeans, pecans, peaches). There is also footage from the Mississippi State Fairgrounds in Jackson, the Dixie National Rodeo, the State Fair, and the Mississippi State University campus and Delta Branch Experiment Station. Several unidentified MSU graduates are interviewed about their views of the future of Mississippi agriculture at the end of the film. The movie was filmed in color on 16 mm film and is narrated by Fred Cook.