Sheldon Radom

In 1920s, Sheldon Radom’s father began Radom Farm Supply in Bainbridge, Michigan. Sheldon Radom eventually took over operations of the store.

My grandfather was a peddler horse and buggy and he saw this little store up in Bainbridge about twelve miles east of Benton Harbor . He helped my father buy that store, and we’ve been there ever since. That was in 1920. In 1926, he started selling bushel baskets to the farmers. When I came back from the service [in 1932], we got in[to] the chemical business.

Back in those days, there w[ere]n’t many chemicals that farmers used. Probably just five or something; sulfur, and poison, lime, copper, and that’s about all they needed. That’s all they used. Now, we probably have closer to two hundred different kinds of chemicals. We have a chemical for every bug. We handle over a hundred and fifty chemicals. The government got strict, and you had to be careful how much you used. Before, it was just pour it on the trees. Nobody died back then either but they still used stronger chemicals than they do now. Now, farmers have to show us that they spray with the processors every year.

They t[ook] off so many good chemicals. They took off ALAR. Our ALAR made an apple hard like it came right off the tree and kept it that way like a McIntosh [that] gets real soft. [ALAR] kept it hard. They took [ALAR] off because they said it caused cancer. Anything cause[s cancer]. Salt and sugar will cause cancer if you [e]at a ton of them at one time. Same way with this stuff here.

In those days, there w[ere]n’t big farms. Now they[‘ve] got a thousand acre, four-hundred acres, three-hundred acre farms. Back in those days, the largest farm was eighty acres. Most of them had forty-acre farms.