Ida Elizabeth Brandon Mathis

Ida Elizabeth Brandon Mathis (1857–1925) was an American farmer and businesswoman who advocated for methods that would improve conditions for Southern farmers, including crop diversification and rotation and better methods of financing for small farmers. She is credited with reducing agricultural poverty in Alabama and diminishing the state's dependence on imported food.

Early life and education

Ida Elizabeth Brandon was born in Florence, Alabama, on September 16, 1857, to Mary Baldwin (Munn) Brandon and Washington McClure Brandon. Her father was a farmer, and she became not only a successful farmer herself but also a businesswoman and national farmers' advocate. She was educated at the local Florence Synodical Female College, where she earned her B.A. in 1874 (with honors) followed by her M.A.

For several years thereafter, she taught natural science and other subjects at a college in Oxford, Alabama.

In 1882, she married Giles Huffman Mathis, a merchant and cotton buyer with whom she had three children.

Farming and advocacy career

Mathis ran her own farm and bought and sold others, becoming one of the largest landowners in the state and gaining the practical experience that fed her later advocacy career. In the early 1900s, she bought over 1,000 acres of poor land in eastern Alabama hill country at $8 an acre and, working with her tenants, built it up into productive farmland. She then sold the land for $40 an acre and repeated the cycle several more times, continuing to focus on buying poor or run-down land, improving it, and selling it. Most frequently, she sold the improved land to her own tenants—both white and black—thus helping to widen the state's base of landowners.