Lauren Kephart Soth

Background

Lauren Soth was born on October 2, 1910 in Sibley, Iowa, United States; the son of Michael Ray Soth and Virginia Mabel (Kephart) Soth.

Education

Lauren Kephart Soth attended Holstein High School and Iowa State University, where he earned a Bachelor of Science in agricultural journalism in 1932 and a Master of Science in agricultural economics in 1938.

Career

Soth began teaching journalism at his alma mater in 1933. His career at Iowa State continued until 1947 as he worked through the ranks of a graduate assistant instructor, an assistant professor, and an associate professor. Economics was added to his teaching load, and he was in charge of economic publications for the university from 1934 to 1942.

During the 1936-1937 academic year, Soth took a leave to edit the U.S. Department of Agriculture's publication, Agricultural Situation, and in 1942 he was a principal agricultural economics consultant for the Office of Price Administration. A stint with the United States Army took him from field artillery at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, to Okinawa, where 45 days of fierce fighting on the front won him the rank of major. While with the occupation army in Korea, he negotiated with Russians to get coal for Korean soybean mills.

In 1947 Soth was hired to write editorials for the Des Moines Register and Des Moines Tribune. His candid, tightly reasoned essays, disdain for intellectual laziness, integrity, and calm approach soon elevated him to assistant editor, then editor of the editorial pages. Upon retiring in 1975, he reduced his workload to a regular Saturday column for another 18 years.

In addition to thousands of editorials and numerous journal articles and special reports, Soth penned four major books: Farm Trouble, An Embarrassment of Plenty, Agriculture in an Industrial Society, and The Farm Policy Game, Play by Play. His special reports included an "Agricultural Basebook of Iowa" for the State Experiment Station, "Farm Policy for the Sixties" for the National Planning Association, and a series of planning pamphlets titled "How Farm People Learn New Methods."

Achievements

• Soth was a notable journalist, who worked for the Des Moines Register and Des Moines Tribune. He is also known as a recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing for "If the Russians Want More Meat...", an editorial article inviting a Soviet delegation to visit Iowa and learn about farming during the Cold War-era.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Farm Trouble

    (A hard look at the problems of agriculture in a growing i...)

    1957
  • The Farm Policy Game: Play by Play

    (The Farm Policy Game: Play by Play is a collection of Sot...)

    1989

Views

Lauren's Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial was conceived while brooding over the "paralysis in diplomacy" as he read in the London Economist that Khrushchev desired to increase Soviet agricultural production and emulate American agricultural methods. Although that editorial remained his favorite, he thought his best writing was on agricultural policy.

A champion of family farms, he urged more investment in rural development to preserve the virtues of rural society and slow the drive toward industrialized farming. He advocated conservation measures as the basis of agricultural policy. Fearful that food processing was concentrated in giant corporations and skeptical of subsidies for corn-based ethanol, he was often at odds with various secretaries of agriculture and entities such as Archer Daniels Midland and the Council for Agricultural Science and Technology.

Personality

Physical Characteristics: Lauren K. Soth died of cancer.

Connections

On June 15, 1934, Soth married Marcella Shaw Van, and they subsequently reared three children: John Michael, Sara Kathryn (Hoogenakker), and Melinda (Fribley).

Father:

Michael Ray Soth

Mother:

Virginia Mabel (Kephart) Soth

Spouse:

Marcella Shaw Van Soth

child:

John Michael Soth

child:

Sara Kathryn Hoogenakker

child:

Melinda Fribley

References

• Hudson, D., Bergman, M., & Horton, L. (Eds.) The biographical dictionary of Iowa
  2009