Albert Aaron Johnson, agricultural economist and educator, was born January 1, 1880, to Isaac A. and Ellen Bakke Johnson of McFarland, Wisconsin. When Albert was two, his father died, and the family moved to Webster, South Dakota. Johnson served in the Spanish-American War and the Philippine Insurrection with the South Dakota Volunteer Infantry. He attended South Dakota Agricultural College in Brookings from 1900 to 1903, and the University of Wisconsin in Madison from 1903 to 1907. An Olympic hammer thrower in 1904, he participated in football and track at Wisconsin until 1907 when he received his B.S. degree in agriculture.
For the next two decades, Johnson followed a career in education. He taught agriculture in Georgia and Marinette, Wisconsin; then organized and directed agricultural schools in Onalaska and Wauwatosa. In 1914, he organized the New York State Institute of Applied Agriculture, Farmingdale, Long Island, which he directed until 1923. And in 1925-1926, he was president of the Penney-Gwinn Institute of Applied Agriculture, Green Cove Springs, Florida.
However, it was Johnson's economic activities which brought him national prominence. He became an authority on the developing Soviet Union after eleven trips there between 1921 and 1934. Originally working with the Near East Relief in 1921, he was invited to Russia by the Soviet government to help set up mechanized agriculture programs to combat famine. In 1923, he returned to Russia as the leader of an unofficial fact-finding tour by several U.S. senators and congressmen. On the remainder of his trips, he was the commercial representative for a variety of American business and industrial concerns. Johnson produced four books on the Soviet Union and many articles, lectures, reports, and bulletins.
In the 1930s and 1940s, Johnson's activities included patenting several improvements to railway cars, founding the Buy American Institute in 1938, agricultural economic work for the government after World War II, and promoting research and education in psychic phenomena. He made his home in New York City and in Longmeadow, Massachusetts.
Johnson was married in 1909 to Ellen Glenn of Dahlonega, Georgia. They had two sons, Albert Richard, a well-known set designer for theater and fairs, and William Glenn, a technical director for theater. Mrs. Johnson died in 1945. A second marriage, to Marie Stone Weston of Longmeadow, ended in divorce in 1952. In the mid-1950s, Johnson retired to Roslyn, South Dakota. He died May 31, 1963 in Sioux Falls.
