Joseph Grant Knapp was born in 1900. Initially he attended the University of Illinois, but became a fellow of the Food Research Institute of Stanford University in 1924 where he went on to receive his Ph.D. (1929). He has also received honorary Doctor of Science degrees from the University of Nebraska and North Carolina State University and has taught at both North Carolina State University and Stanford University. In 1934 Knapp became the principal agricultural economist for the Farm Credit Administration. He was the first administrator of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Farmer Cooperative Service (1953-1966). Knapp also served the Brookings Institution and the Farm Credit Administration. In 1975 he received the Cooperative Foundation Ellerbe Award.



Knapp published a two-volume history of the cooperative movement in the United States: The Rise of American Cooperative Enterprise, 1620-1920 (1969) and The Advance of American Cooperative Enterprise, 1920-1945 (1973). He is also the author of numerous other publications, including Farmers in business, studies in cooperative enterprise (1963); The hard winter wheat pools; an experiment in agricultural marketing integration (1933); The cooperative marketing of livestock (co-author, 1931); Great American cooperators; biographical sketches of 101 major pioneers in cooperative development (1967); Edwin G. Nourse, economist for the people (1979); Seeds that grew; a history of the cooperative grange league federation exchange (1960); An analysis of agricultural cooperation in England (1966); The Glen Haven story (1967); An appraisement of agricultural cooperation in Ireland (1964); and Cooperative farm supply purchasing in the British Isles (1939).



Joseph Knapp passed away in 1983.