Founded in Winston, North Carolina, in 1886 by North Carolina native Leonidas Lafayette Polk (1837–1892; a Confederate Army veteran who is often confused with CSA General Leonidas Polk, no relation), the publication was intended to bring the latest information on crop and livestock production to the reunited nation's agrarian economy in the Southeast.

After Polk died in 1892, Clarence H. Poe from Raleigh, NC, took over as editor in 1899, and in 1903, he and three partners purchased the publication, taking it from a newspaper to a magazine with 36,000 subscribers by 1908.

The magazine broadened its reach beyond the Southeast by merging its Raleigh, North Carolina, operation with the Southern Farm Gazette newspaper published in Starkville, Mississippi.

This merger of the Progressive Farmer and the Southern Farm Gazette resulted in the need to have a production and printing facility that would be a one-day train trip to both of the editorial offices in Starkville and Raleigh, North Carolina, for receiving the typewritten feature stories for publication.

The Progressive Farmer had extended its appeal among suburban housewives, and that segment of its circulation received the new magazine, Southern Living to establish its distribution and advertising rate base.