Sustained 1870s–80s agricultural-lobby pressure and Agriculture Secretary Rusk's advocacy were a primary driver of the 1890–91 weather-service transfer

meteorologyinstitutionsagriculturecongresslobbyingweather-bureau1880s

Farm organizations lobbied Congress and the Army Signal Service for an expanded, agriculture-oriented weather service for over a decade before the 1890–91 transfer (claim-1890-organic-act-split-civilian-weather-duties-from-army-signal-corps). Per historian Jamie Pietruska's peer-reviewed account, "Throughout the 1870s the Signal Service acknowledged steadily increasing demand for a rural weather service, and by the mid-1880s, the National Grange and other agrarian organisations had intensified the call for improved access to the Signal Service network." In 1886, two bills to extend Signal Service benefits to farmers (H.R. 2318 and H.R. 2506) reached hearings before the House Committee on Agriculture, where the President of the National Agricultural Congress, Robert Beverly, testified: "There has not been an agricultural meeting of any society state or local in the last two years that has not called for this bill. Everyone has called for it."

On the executive side, Bob Glahn's NOAA-published history states that Jeremiah M. Rusk, the first Secretary of Agriculture, "wanted the weather responsibility" for his newly created department. The 1890 Act's own enumerated duties corroborate the agricultural framing: it charges the new Bureau with "the forecasting of weather, the issue of storm warnings, the display of weather and flood signals for the benefit of agriculture, commerce, and navigation... the reporting of temperature and rainfall conditions for the cotton states, the display of frost and cold wave signals, the distribution of meteorological information in the interest of agriculture and commerce" — agriculture named first and repeatedly among the Bureau's statutory purposes.