author
Sir Horace Curzon Plunkett
1854–1932
A practical reformer and writer, he helped change rural Ireland by championing agricultural cooperation and better farming institutions. His work connected Irish farmers with ideas that would influence cooperative movements far beyond Ireland.
2 Audiobooks
Ireland In The New Century
by Sir Horace Curzon Plunkett
The Rural Life Problem of the United States Notes of an Irish Observer
by Sir Horace Curzon Plunkett
About the author
Born in 1854, he became one of the best-known advocates of agricultural cooperation in Ireland. After time spent ranching in the American West, he returned with a strong interest in modern farming methods and rural economic reform, and went on to found the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society in the 1890s.
He believed that farmers could improve their lives by working together through creameries, cooperatives, and shared business structures. That practical vision made him a major force in Irish rural development, and he also served in public life as a Member of Parliament and later, briefly, in the senate of the Irish Free State.
Alongside his reform work, he wrote about agriculture, economics, and Irish public life. He died in 1932, but his name remains closely tied to the cooperative movement and to efforts to modernize Irish farming and rural society.