journal article
100 Years of Climate Risk Assessment on the High Plains: Which Farm Paradigm Does Irrigation Serve?Agricultural History
Vol. 63, No. 2, Climate, Agriculture, and History (Spring, 1989)
, pp. 243-269 (27 pages)
Published By: Agricultural History Society
//www.jstor.org/stable/3743516
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Agricultural History is the journal of record in the field. As such, it publishes articles on all aspects of the history of agriculture and rural life with no geographical or temporal limits. The editor is particularly interested in articles that address a novel subject, demonstrate considerable primary and secondary research, display an original interpretation, and are of general interest to Society members and other Agricultural History readers. The Agricultural History Society was founded in Washington, DC in 1919 "to promote the interest, study and research in the history of agriculture." Incorporated in 1924, the Society began publishing a journal in 1927. The term "agricultural history" has always been interpreted broadly. Currently the membership includes agricultural economists, anthropologists, economists, environmentalists, historians, historical geographers, rural sociologists, and a variety of independent scholars.
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Agricultural History is published by the Agricultural History Society. Initially affiliated with the American Historical Association, the Agricultural History Society is the third oldest, discipline-based professional organization in the United States.
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journal article
Great Plains Farming: A Century of Change and AdjustmentAgricultural History
Vol. 51, No. 1, Agriculture in the Great Plains, 1876-1936: A Symposium (Jan., 1977)
, pp. 244-256 (13 pages)
Published By: Agricultural History Society
//www.jstor.org/stable/3741648
Journal Information
Agricultural History is the journal of record in the field. As such, it publishes articles on all aspects of the history of agriculture and rural life with no geographical or temporal limits. The editor is particularly interested in articles that address a novel subject, demonstrate considerable primary and secondary research, display an original interpretation, and are of general interest to Society members and other Agricultural History readers. The Agricultural History Society was founded in Washington, DC in 1919 "to promote the interest, study and research in the history of agriculture." Incorporated in 1924, the Society began publishing a journal in 1927. The term "agricultural history" has always been interpreted broadly. Currently the membership includes agricultural economists, anthropologists, economists, environmentalists, historians, historical geographers, rural sociologists, and a variety of independent scholars.
Publisher Information
Agricultural History is published by the Agricultural History Society. Initially affiliated with the American Historical Association, the Agricultural History Society is the third oldest, discipline-based professional organization in the United States.
Rights & Usage
This item is part of a JSTOR Collection.
For terms and use, please refer to our Terms and Conditions
Agricultural History © 1977 Agricultural History Society
Request Permissions
Between 1860 and 1900, the number of farms in the Great Plains of the United States tripled. This was due to two crucial factors of the late nineteenth century: the taming of vast, windswept prairies so that the land would yield crops and the transformation of agriculture into big business utilizing mechanization, transportation, and scientific cultivation. How did these improvements change farming in the Plains? Why did farmers move to the Great Plains? What were the hardships and difficulties? Let's examine farming on the Great Plains!
Prairie
A large open area of (grass)land, the term often describes the Great Plains in North America.
Farming on the Great Plains in the late 1800s
Taming the Great Plains into a fertile farming region did not come easily. The climate and landscape of the Plains presented formidable challenges. Furthermore, overcoming these challenges did not guarantee success or even provide security. Agricultural development in the West turned the United States into the world's breadbasket. Still, it also scarred the lives of hundreds of thousands of men and women who made the development possible.
Migration into the Great Plains
Settlement of the Plains and the West involved the most significant migration in American history. Between 1870 and 1900, more acres were settled and put under cultivation than in the previous 250 years. Males accounted for most migrants to new agricultural areas, outnumbering women by about six to five.
Most migrants came from two places of origin: the eastern states or Europe. Several western states opened migration bureaus in the East and in Europe to lure settlers west. Land-grant railroads were incredibly aggressive, advertising cheap land, arranging credit terms, offering reduced fares, and promising instant success.
Most migrants went west because opportunities there seemed to offer a better life.
Did you know? Between 1870 and 1910, the nation's population rose from 40 million to 92 million, and urban populations swelled by four hundred percent. As a result, demand for farm products multiplied.
Revolutionary Changes in Farming on the Great Plains
With the demand for farm products and the increasing number of settlers moving west there came a need for better farming techniques and technology to increase crop yields and tame the prairie.
- Scientific advances enabled farmers to use the soil more efficiently. Agricultural experts developed the dry farming technique, a plowing system that prevented precious moisture from evaporating.
- Scientists perfected “hard” wheat varieties whose seeds could withstand northern winters.
- Millers invented an efficient process for grinding these tougher new wheat kernels into flour.
- Railroad expansion made remote farming regions more accessible and allowed for more efficient transportation to eastern markets.
- Grain elevator construction also eased problems of shipping and storage.
- Mechanization of the farming industry with mechanized seeders, harrows, combines, binders, mowers, headers, cultivators, rotary plows, and other machines was introduced to the Plains in the 1870s and 1880s.
Did you know? For centuries the acreage of grain a farmer could produce had been limited by the amount that could be harvested by hand. Before mechanization, a single farmer could harvest about 7.5 acres of wheat. With an automatic binder that cut and tied bundles of grain, that same farmer could cultivate 135 acres.
Farming on the Great Plains Conditions
Despite such developments, life on the plains was much more challenging than advertised by those promoting the move westward. Migrants often encountered scarcities of essentials they had taken for granted back home. Vast tracts of land contained little lumber for housing and fuel. Pioneer families were forced to build houses of sod and burn manure for heat. Eventually, railroads made lumber and coal more available, but both were expensive.
Lumber
Another term for cut wood, usually used as fuel for fires or constructing houses.
Sod
The surface turf of grassland. Early settlers on the Great Plain would use sod to build houses within the landscape as lumber was not available to construct other types of homes.
Mail Order Companies
Most farm families survived by depending on their inner resolve and organizing monthly gatherings of nearby farmsteads. By the early 1900s, external developments brought rural settlers closer contact with modern life. Starting in the 1870s and 1880s, mail-order houses - chiefly Montgomery Ward and Sears Roebuck - expanded and made the products of the industrial east available to almost everyone.
This included housing and access to commodities such as clothing, cookware, furniture, household appliances, and eventually consistent access to newspapers and other literature.
Farming Problems on the Great Plains
Other problems were out of the control of the technology of the time that plagued the Great Plains farmer. Let's examine these problems.
Limited Water
Water was as scarce as timber. Few families were lucky or wealthy enough to buy land near a stream that did not dry in the summer or freeze in the winter. Most had to transport water over long distances or try to collect rainwater. Machinery for digging wells was limited until the 1880s; it was costly. Most wells were dug by hand and only to depths of fifty feet.
Did you know? Windmills were another method sometimes constructed to bring water to the surface but they were also expensive to build.
Climate and Weather
Even more formidable than the terrain of the Great Plains was the climate. The expanse between the Missouri River and the Rocky Mountains is divided by semi-arid regions from northeastern North Dakota and southwestern Kansas and southward to the Oklahoma panhandle. East of this line, annual rainfall averaged about 28 inches per year, enough for crops. West of this line, life-giving rain was never particular: farmers, heartened by adequate water one year, had dust and broken plows in limestone soil the next.
Arid
Very dry areas with little to no rainfall.
The weather seldom followed predictable patterns in any part of the region. In the summer, weeks of torrid heat and parching winds would suddenly give way to violent storms with flash floods washing away crops and homes. Winter blizzards piled up mountainous snowdrifts that halted all outdoor activities. Severe cold waves and howling winds plunged temperatures below zero.
Spring and fall, supposedly more temperate seasons, brought their challenges. In the spring, melting snow from the mountains swelled streams and flooded fields. In the fall, dry conditions could bring on prairie fires.
Did you know? Even if the weather cooperated, nature could be vengeful. Weather that is good for crops is also suitable for worms and insects. In the 1870s and 1880s, grasshopper plagues ate up entire farms. With only a warning of a buzzing din, a cloud of insects a mile high and wide would smother the land and devour everything in sight: plants, seeds, tree bark, and clothes.
Crops Grown on the Great Plains
American settlers revolutionized the Great Plains into a productive agricultural region despite these hardships. By the early 1900s, the Great Plains were producing grains for not just the United States but enough to sell to the world and dominate international markets. The list below shows the crops grown in the Great Plains and where they were most prevalent.
Wheat: produced in the Dakotas, Kansas, northern Oklahoma and Texas, eastern Colorado, and southern Nebraska
Corn: grown in Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, South Dakota, and northern Kansas.
Oats: grown in Wyoming, Colorado, Nebraska, and in regions of the Dakotas
Loose Hay: grown in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Iowa.
Farming in the Great Plains Summary
Settlement into the West and the various technological and scientific advances that made it possible altered American agriculture and forced farmers to adjust to a new age. Their adjustments were neither smooth nor painless. The social and economic problems that accompanied agricultural transformation eventually shaped the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in the United States.
Farming on the Great Plains - Key takeaways
- Settlement of the Plains and the West involved the most significant migration in American history. Between 1870 and 1900, more acres were settled and put under cultivation than in the previous 250 years.
- With the demand for farm products, and the increasing number of settlers moving west, came a need for better farming techniques and technology to increase crop yields and tame the prairie.
- Despite such developments, life on the plains was much more challenging than advertised by those promoting the move westward.
- Other problems were out of the control of the technology of the time that plagued the Great Plains farmer, such as a lack of water, inconsistent weather, and a harsh climate.
- American settlers revolutionized the Great Plains into a productive agricultural region despite these hardships. By the early 1900s, the Great Plains were producing grains for not just the United States but enough to sell to the world and dominate international markets.
References
- Billington, Ray A. “Westward Expansion: A History of the American Frontier. 2nd Edition. New York: Macmillan, 1960.