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A Companion to American Agricultural History. Группа авторов
Читать онлайн.Название A Companion to American Agricultural History
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9781119632245
Автор произведения Группа авторов
Издательство John Wiley & Sons Limited
Yet Midwestern livestock production was more than cattle and hogs. Horse breeding for racing and light draft work was more significant than for the farm, given the comparatively small size of early nineteenth-century horses. But the importation of European breeds, such as the Percheron starting in the late 1830s and in significant numbers in the 1850s, fueled regional growth in horse breeding. Missouri mules, first bred for the Santa Fe trade in the 1820s and 1830s, became famous across the South by the late nineteenth century. Planters relied on mules rather than horses because many of them believed that only mules could withstand rough handling by enslaved people. This prejudice continued after the demise of slavery and explains, in part, the importance of mules in the transition to sharecropping and tenancy in the cotton-producing states and the role of midwestern farmers in sustaining the cotton economy. (Ashton 1924; Bogue 1963; Jones 1983)
Sheep production, while never rivaling the importance of midwestern cattle, hogs, or draft animals, was a regular feature of farming across the region. Another legacy of northern farming, sheep required closer attention than hogs or cattle and were at risk on the open range that characterized much of the South. The settlement of the Midwest coincided with the beginning of the Merino craze, a mania for the superb fleece of Spanish sheep. Merinos were first imported into Vermont in 1802 and spread rapidly throughout the Northeast (Jones 1983). In Wisconsin, as the fortunes of wheat farming waned due to soil exhaustion, farmers turned to sheep, increasing the size of their flocks. In general, however, western farmers did not practice the kind of careful sheep husbandry that was typical of the Northeast. Poor feed and the lack of winter shelter were common complaints before 1860. During the Civil War, government demand for wool boosted prices and spurred production across the region as well as growth in the number of carding and woolen mills (Bogue 1963; Lampard 1963; Crockett 1970; Jones 1983).
Northern influences also included commercial dairying, an artifact from New England and the Mid-Atlantic. Butter production was common across the region from the early days of midwestern settlement, reflecting the tradition of diversified northern farms. Local shopkeepers purchased and collected farm-produced butter and then sold it in urban markets. Dairy for commercial cheesemaking reflected Yankee culture. The Western Reserve of Ohio became an early cheese-producing area, later challenged by Yankee farmers near Columbus. In Wisconsin and northern Illinois, New Yorkers influenced the course of dairying by importing their expertise and practices from the leading dairy state in the nation (Lampard 1963; Jones 1983).
During the early to mid-nineteenth century, a wave of wheat production moved across the region, extending from the Mid-Atlantic region and following the opening of new land for settlement. Ohio, Michigan, and Indiana, supplanted New York and Pennsylvania as leading wheat producers. Both winter and spring varieties were often grown on prairie and newly cleared land following an initial year or two of corn production. Wheat was a reliable cash crop for many farmers, with ready markets in local communities as well as New Orleans or New York, especially after the completion of the Erie Canal that resulted in lower transportation costs (Lewis 2002; Salstrom 2007). By the 1860s, wheat production surged in the more westerly states of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois, and Iowa. A pastor at Cottage Grove, Minnesota, noted in 1866 that “Nothing interests the people of this community more than the price of wheat” and in 1861 a Wisconsin newspaper had proclaimed that “Wheat is King, and Wisconsin is the center of the Empire” (Jarchow 1949; Ross 1951; Lampard 1963).
By the 1870s, farmers in the Dakota Territories, Nebraska, and Kansas were emerging as important producers. In particular, the Red River Valley of North Dakota and Minnesota experienced a wheat farming bonanza. A crash in the Northern Pacific Railroad stock price led promoters to trade deflated bonds for land in hopes of sparking settlement which would, in turn, restore value to the railroad. A handful of investors began large-scale mechanized farming, sustained by a large contingent of seasonal labor to assist with the harvest and threshing. While there were never many bonanza farms, perhaps no more than 100, global media turned attention not only to the region but also to the viability of highly mechanized farming (Drache 1964).
Mechanization became a hallmark of the region. While corn harvesting resisted mechanization in the nineteenth century, machines for corn planting and cultivating, wheat seeding and harvesting, and threshing small grains were developed in the antebellum period and became commonplace after the Civil War. While mechanization resulted in only modest productivity gains on the farm before the war, largely due to the comparatively small number of machines in use, limits on farm size, and improved acreage, the technology of the mid-century promised to permit production to scale up in subsequent years. By 1900, farmers could do much of their field work while sitting down (Bogue 1963; Atack and Bateman 1987). Some farmers were slow to mechanize and there was even resistance to mechanization. Throughout the region, farm laborers resented being supplanted and deskilled by mechanical harvesters. In some cases, they threatened to burn or destroy machines, barns, and stacks of unthreshed grain (Argersinger and Argersinger 1984).
Settlers who occupied the public domain concerned themselves with improvement, traditionally understood as erecting buildings and fences and bringing land into cultivation. But there was one significant obstacle for many farmers in realizing the potential of the investment in farm land: drainage. There were millions of acres of these marshy lands in a broad arc encircling the Great Lakes and extending beyond the Red River Valley of the North, through central Iowa across Illinois and Indiana and extending into central Ohio. This part of the region was scrubbed flat and was subsequently known as the wet prairie. Early settlers simply lived with the fact that much of their farmland, in some cases as much as 40 percent, was not arable. They could graze it or cut prairie hay from it in late summer, but it was not viable for the farm family to excavate extensive drainage ditches or dig the trenches to lay a system of ceramic drain tiles (Prince 1997).
In the late nineteenth century, however, rising land prices put more pressure on farmers to develop this land. There was new steam-powered equipment available as well as more available laborers, lessening the pressure on the family. Provided 60 percent of farmers in the affected area approved, local drainage districts could be organized, each authorized to develop drainage plans, levy fees, and incur debt to implement those plans. While many drainage districts were financial failures and, where drainage succeeded there was a decline in biodiversity, the net result was a gain of millions of acres in arable land by 1930, much of it given over to corn, oats, and hay. As the old ceramic drain lines have broken over the years since tiling, farmers have turned to perforated plastic pipe to keep the land productive for the crops that pay the bills (Prince 1997).
While corn growing, livestock feeding and breeding, and dairy have been the iconic Midwestern commodities, the region’s record of diversity in commodity production is a defining trait. The Midwest, in comparison to much of the country, saw a much greater degree of diversification in commodity production. This is not to assert that other regions did not have diverse household and market production; rather, it means that farmers in the midcontinent had multiple paths to profit, often on one farm. Southern commodity agriculture was long dominated by cotton, tobacco, and, for a brief period and to a lesser degree, hemp. The states of the arid West were characterized by wheat and other cereals. New England farm profits were often driven by dairy, and while the Mid-Atlantic region had a tradition of diversified farming, the profit centers on those farms were often truck farming for nearby urban markets and canneries or fluid milk production. The Pacific Northwest was readily recognizable as fruit country. Only California rivaled or exceeded the Midwest in terms of diversity, a fact that may well reflect the midwestern roots of so many California farmers as much as its climate.
Midwestern farmers took advantage of excellent soil and optimal growing conditions in the midcontinent to develop extensive vegetable farming operations. Vegetable crops, long raised in truck patches strictly for local markets, expanded acreage with the rise of the canning industry after the Civil War. Production of tomatoes, cucumbers, beans, beets, asparagus, peas, pumpkin, and sweet corn for canning surged, starting in the 1870s. By the 1910s, Atlantic, Iowa, boasted of having the largest corn canning factory in the world, processing multiple crops and operating around the clock when vegetables were in season. At that time there were dozens