The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) fully adopted federal grading standards for food and other agricultural products during the Second World War. In 1939, the Agricultural Marketing Service, a USDA agency, began administering commodity standardization, grading, and inspections of several programs, including cotton and tobacco. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) was founded in 1862 when President Abraham Lincoln signed the USDA into law by an act of Congress. This new organization followed the interest of farmers and agricultural communities, which made up over half of the US population at the time. The USDA’s first commissioner, agriculturalist Isaac Newton, began collecting agricultural data, introducing new plants and animals, and analyzing soils, fruits, vegetables, and grains to foster the country’s agronomic potential. Although efforts were underway to further promote agricultural trade, the use of federal grading standards for agricultural products would not be fully developed until the first half of the twentieth century.

Established in 1913, the Office of Markets first standardized the egg market, thus launching a system of grading in the United States. In order to reduce speculative manipulation of the cotton market, Congress passed the Cotton Futures Act in 1916, which required the exact grade and type of cotton to be submitted to the government upon its sale at a cotton exchange. Additionally, the act authorized the USDA to establish physical standards to determine color grade, staple length, and the strength of cotton, which allowed the organization to track the location of and type of cotton being grown. The 1916 Act replaced the Cotton Futures Act of 1914, which was ruled unconstitutional.

In 1939, the functions of several agencies such as the Bureau of Agricultural Economics and the Food and Drug Administration, were transferred into the newly formed Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS). Despite this, the use of federal grading standards were not fully adopted until World War II, when food for soldiers required grading and inspection due to the inconsistency of food quality being served. Today, the AMS administers commodity standardization, grading, and inspections to five programs, including cotton and tobacco. The organization produces and distributes physical cotton classification standards, which provide references used to test fiber characteristics on all cotton produced in the United States each year.