Babcock was born on February 23, 1889, on a farm near Gilbertsville in Chenango County, N. Y. , the only child of Mary Emma (Donahue) and Howard Worden Babcock. His father, a native of Vermont, was descended from a family which had settled in Rhode Island before the American Revolution; his mother was born in New York City, the daughter of a Protestant Irish father and an English mother.
After graduating from the Gilbertsville high school, he spent two years in farm work before entering Syracuse University. There he planned to study law but became interested in botany instead. After receiving his B. A. degree in 1911, Babcock took a summer course at Cornell University to qualify for teaching vocational agriculture in high schools, a newly opening field.
He was awarded an Honorary doctorates from Syracuse University and Michigan State University.
His first positions were at Albion, New York (1911 - 1912), and at the Elmira Free Academy (1912 - 1913), where he was head of the biology department. At that time the movement for promoting better farming practices through demonstration work in the field, begun in 1903 by Seaman A. Knapp, was gaining a foothold in New York. Aided by state and federal funds, a system of county demonstration agents quickly grew up, linked to the extension department of the State College of Agriculture at Cornell and supported by county organizations of farmers known as farm bureaus. Babcock in 1913 became county agent for Cattaraugus County. His work was of such high quality that within a few months he was called to Ithaca as county agent for Tompkins County.
Babcock became assistant state leader of county agents in 1914 and state leader two years later. The farm bureau system expanded rapidly under his direction, and in 1917 he fostered the establishment of the New York State Federation of County Farm Bureaus (later called the New York Farm Bureau Federation), of which he was secretary until 1921. From 1918 to 1920 he was also secretary of the New York Conference Board of Farm Organizations. While serving as state food commissioner during World War I, Babcock had become interested, as he later wrote, in "what farmers might do for themselves through a cooperative". Thus, in 1920, he was instrumental in having the Board of Farm Organizations sponsor the founding of the Cooperative Grange League Federation Exchange (the G. L. F. ) as a statewide cooperative purchasing organization. Babcock was one of the original directors of the G. L. F. , and took charge of its "million-dollar" stock selling drive, which was a phenomenal success. He gave up his position as state county agent leader in 1920 to develop his own expanding farming interests near Ithaca.
Later in the year he was persuaded by George F. Warren, head of the department of agricultural economics at Cornell University, to take a position there as professor of marketing. His innovative and stimulating courses attracted a large following of men who were soon to become key leaders in the G. L. F. and in agriculture. When the G. L. F. faltered after two years of uncertain and inept management, Babcock was drafted to take charge as general manager. Under his leadership, it soon became the outstanding regional purchasing cooperative in the United States, and its pathfinding procedures made it the model for cooperatives throughout the nation. Babcock expanded the field sales force, upgraded the system of local distributive agencies, and made imaginative use of advertising to interest farmers in G. L. F. feed, seed, and fertilizer. He also established vital and lasting links with academic specialists in rural sociology, marketing, and agricultural sciences at Cornell and other land-grant universities. Babcock managed the G. L. F. from 1922 to 1932, and again from 1935 to 1937. He continued to give direction to the organization's marketing, research, and educational programs until 1945, by which time the G. L. F. had developed a business volume of $174 million and assets of over $34 million.
Babcock also served on the board of trustees of Cornell University from 1930 until his death. As chairman, 1939-1946, he presided over the university's wartime expansion and, working with President Edmund E. Day and with New York Gov. Thomas E. Dewey, was instrumental in founding the Schools of Nutrition, Business Administration, and Labor Relations. Babcock's leadership, along with that of the first director, Leonard Maynard, made the School of Nutrition one of the best in the world.
In 1933 he was called to Washington by the Roosevelt administration to help unscramble the Federal Farm Board and put the Farm Credit Administration on a sound operating basis. He was one of the first directors of the F. C. A. 's Central Bank for Cooperatives. As president of the National Council of Farmer Cooperatives in 1941, Babcock helped mobilize the work of cooperatives to meet wartime agricultural needs.
Babcock made his own farm, "Sunnygables, " something of an experimental laboratory in promoting advancements like grass silage, assembly-line milking, home freezers in the interest of better nutrition, and interchangeable wheels for farm equipment.
While hospitalized in New York City following a minor operation, he died of a heart attack at the age of sixty-one. He was buried in East Lawn Cemetery, Ithaca, New York.
Babcock had a profound and beneficial influence on the agricultural character of the United States, both through his demonstration of the possibilities and values of strong democratic cooperative organizations, and in his pioneering leadership in the fields of animal and human nutrition and in improved farm business and cultural practices. In 1946 the American Farm Bureau Federation granted Babcock its highest award for "Distinguished Service to American Agriculture. " He was inducted into the Cooperative Hall of Fame in 1976.
Babcock was a man of restless energy, intellectual drive, and saving common sense.
On October 23, 1913, he married Hilda Wall Butler, who had been a fellow teacher in Albion. They had three children: Howard Edward, Barbara Elizabeth, and John Butler.
