David Lubin
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David Lubin (10 June 1849 - 1 January 1919) born in Klodawa, Poland, was a merchant and agriculturalist. He was pivotal in founding the International Institute of Agriculture in 1905. His family moved to England in 1853, he then moved to New York City and then to Sacramento, California in 1874. In Sacramento, he started a prosperous mail order business with his half-brother Harris Weinstock and his sister Jeanette Levy. Lubin's One Price Store later became known as the Weinstock-Lubin Company.
While in Sacramento, he bought a fruit ranch near Sacramento and land for raising wheat. His knowledge of agriculture assisted him when he helped found the California Fruit Growers' Union. He then helped settle Eastern European Jewish refugees who worked on various farms in the area and, in 1891, he became the director of the International Society for the Colonization of Russian Jews. He then began to campaign for subsidies and protection for farmers, initially in California but eventually on an international scale. His son, Simon, helped him develop a proposal for an international chamber of agriculture; in 1896, David Lubin moved to Europe to implement the proposal. In 1905, with the sponsorship of Italy's King Victor Emmanuel III, the International Institute of Agriculture (the IIA) opened, in Rome. the Institute's goals were to help farmers share knowledge, produce systematically, establish a cooperative system of rural credit, and have control over the marketing of their products. In 1906, Lubin was appointed the permanent U.S. delegate to the IIA. In 1946, the IIA was dissolved and its functions and assets were transferred to the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization where the David Lubin Memorial Library was dedicated (1952). Here is a direct link to a large biography of Lubin on the FAO's website
The U.S. Federal Farm Act (1916), whose founding ideas and policies can be seen to be influenced by Lubin and the International Institute of Agriculture, introduced rural credit and contributed to the relief of American farmers during the Great Depression. Similarly, Lubin's successful fight for the lowering of oppressive freight rates also helped lead to the development of the parcel post system.
In addition, Lubin wrote essays and treatises. His novel, Let There be Light, proposed a universal world religion.
The Western Jewish History Center, of the Judah L. Magnes Museum, in Berkeley, California has a large collection of papers, correspondence, publications, and photographs of David Lubin.
