Jay Jones, editor of Farmers & Consumers Market Bulletin, recently visited the Bulloch County Historical Society to share a history of the Georgia Department of Agriculture publication that has facilitated person-to-person sales of livestock, farm equipment, seeds, bulbs, hay and handicrafts for 107 years.

Jones attended Georgia Southern and, as a student, wrote for the Eagle, a student-led newspaper formerly published by the Statesboro Herald. After graduation he wrote for the Herald itself, and later for the Savannah Morning News, the Valdosta Daily Times and – following several years when he left newspapers to work in insurance underwriting – the Rockdale Citizen in Conyers.

He has been the Market Bulletin’s editor since 2022.

The tabloid-sized paper carries news about agricultural topics and rural life, as well as many classified ads and some display advertising. It was first published in 1917, but not even the Department of Agriculture has copies or archival images of issues published before a January 1926 edition that Jones displayed as part of his slide show.

“The first nine years is lost to the winds of time. …,” he said. “The Market Bulletin has changed its appearance over the years, but its basic mission has remained the same as far as promoting Georgia agriculture and serving the needs of people concerned about agriculture in Georgia.”

Jones spoke to Historical Society members and guests during their July 22 monthly meeting.

Department is 150

The Georgia Department of Agriculture, established in 1874, is celebrating its 150th anniversary this year.  So Jones also exhibited images of some of the annual reports the department published from 1874 to 1917, also promoting Georgia agriculture and the availability of farming jobs.

Commissioner of Agriculture J.J. Brown, who served 1917-1927, founded Georgia’s Market Bulletin. A political progressive, Brown encouraged crop diversification and argued for tenant farmers to own their own land. He also established the Bureau of Markets and considered the Bulletin “a market in print,” Jones noted.

A slide headlined “Uniquely Georgia, but not really,” showed the covers of several other states’ “Market Bulletin” publications.

“Around the turn of the 20th century, a lot of states, particularly southeastern states, started their own market bulletins,” he said.

South Carolina’s was founded in 1913, West Virginia’s in 1916, and the Mississippi Market Bulletin in 1928. Louisiana also has one. Alabama used to have one, but it ceased publication, and Florida’s is now online-only, Jones reported.

Boll weevil’s role

The boll weevil, which had made its way into the United States via Texas in 1892 and arrived in Georgia by 1915, decimated cotton yields, Jones noted, and was a big factor in the drive to promote farm diversification.

Illustrating how some things haven’t changed much, he showed Market Bulletin classified ads from 98 years apart in parallel. In 1926, O.L. McLemore of Statesboro was offering Hereford bulls, cows, heifers and calves for sale. In 2024, Fred Blitch of Statesboro advertises cattle in the Market Bulletin in similar terms.

But other things have evolved. Although the Market Bulletin has always received many ads for used tractors, today a large segment of its market is among collectors who buy older tractors in various conditions, “put their heart and soul into rebuilding these machines,” he said, and often drive them in parades.

Ads for farm labor are rare in the Bulletin in the Internet Age, but they were very common, and sometimes sad, after the First World War and during the Great Depression. In 1926 a woman in Offerman, Georgia advertised for “a boy, 14 to 18 years old to help with the farm.” In 1934 someone sought a “refined education Christian woman, unencumbered.”

Some ads from that era look “more like personal ads than farm help ads,” Jones observed.

Politics of the past

He also acknowledged that some 20th century commissioners of agriculture used the Market Bulletin as a vehicle for political messages and conflicts. One of Georgia’s most controversial governors, Eugene Talmadge, was first elected as ag commissioner in 1926, re-elected and served in that role through 1932, the year that he was first elected governor.

“He knew the power of the press, probably too much. He was accused of abusing it, using it as a personal megaphone,” Jones said.

Some of Talmadge’s opinion pieces attacking federal farm policies, as well as political enemies, were published on the front page. When the Legislature enacted a budget rider prohibiting anything but ads from being published in the Bulletin, Talmadge instead published his views in a private newspaper, the Southern Cultivator.

Today’s Bulletin

News items were later restored to the state publication. Today, “the intention of the Market Bulletin is to be the heartbeat of agriculture in everything we put into it,” Jones said.

For almost 70 years, the Market Bulletin was published weekly, and during that time it was free to anyone who signed up. At peak circulation before efforts to control costs, it was sent to about 230,000 subscribers, he said.

Today it is published 26 times a year, every other Wednesday, by a staff of just two people, including Jones.

Now the price of a year’s subscription is $10, and the Market Bulletin has about 35,000 paid subscribers. It is also distributed to about 3,000 farmers who qualify for GATE, the Georgia Agricultural Tax Exemption program.