Social Studies Toby Treasure
Schott/Martain 4/17/14
How Has Farming Changed Over Time?
It is a fact that around Twenty two million American workers process, produce, and trade the nation's food and fiber. But around only 4.6 million of those american people live on the farms. Slightly less than 2 percent of the total U.S. Population ("Goodman"). This means that a lot of U.S farmers work at factories. This informational piece starts in the Middle Ages and goes all the way to farming today. Farming has changed a lot over time.
Farming has changed a lot over time, new technology has been invented, more food can now be produced, and more farms have opened. Most of the new technology that has been invented for farming was made to make farming faster. In the 18th century horses and oxen were used for power, hay and grain cutting was done with a sickle, cultivating by hoe threshing was done with a flail, ("Spielmaker"). A lot also happened in the 17th century; The scythe and cradle was introduced, the invention of cotton gin in 1793, Thomas Jefferson's plow with a moldboard with the least resistance tested (1794) ("Spielmaker"). A very common fertilization technique in the middle age was called "marling". The technique Marling is when a farmer would spread clay which contained lime carbonate on to their soil. This process restored the nutrients needed to grow crops. Some farmers also used manure as a fertilizer which they got from livestock they raised ("Newman"). Farmers had a spring and a fall crop....
... middle of paper ...
...grow more crops are a good thing but these fertilizers also make the food filled with chemicals ("Goodman 4"). A lot of good has happened though, farmers have enrolled a total of 31 million acres in the conservation reserve program to protect the environment and provide the environment and provide a habitat for wildlife. Inception in 1985, the program has helped reduce soil erosion by 622 million tons and restored more than 2 million acres of Westland ("Goodman 4").
As this informational piece says new inventions, injections, livestock, strategies for farming, and much more has changed a lot over time. Although a lot of new things has been invented and farming has become a lot faster, injections, factory farming, and much more has been invented that is not healthy for people. The question still stands, "has farming gotten better or worse over time?"
New technologies not only allowed farming to become more efficient, but made the process of shipping crops west much easier. The most important innovation in farming itself was the horse-drawn combine, which required many horses to operate, but allowed wheat, a popular crop to grow in the west, to be harvested en masse. (Document D) However, railroads were also incredibly important for farmers, as they allowed Wheat, cotton, and corn to be transported across the country
In the movie “American Meat” the writers discussed the difference between commodity farming and sustainable farming. The film does not give a balanced view between the two types of farming. The future of farming is sustainable farming. As seen in the movie, it is possible to sustain all of the American people while practicing sustainable farming methods.
“Farming techniques such as strip cropping, terracing, crop rotation, contour plowing, and cover crops were advocated.” ("About the Dust Bowl")These new techniques were advocated in order to try and prevent more dust from getting picked up by wind and starting the dust storm again. “But for years, farmers had plowed the soil too fine, and they contributed to the creation of the Dust Bowl.”(Ganzel) This was a big mistake farmers had made. This was one of the huge factors in contributing to the Dust Bowl. This has definitely changed now. “Now, many farmers are learning how to raise crops without tilling their fields at all. (Ganzel) Farmers now not tilling their fields at all is a new farming
After reading McKibben and Hurst’s articles in the book Food Matters, both authors present arguments on “industrial farming”, and although Hurst provides a realistic sense on farming, McKibben’s suggestions should be what we think about.
Pre-industrial labor mostly consisted of farming and agriculture involving the entire family. In 1823, 97 percent of all Americans still lived in farms therefore the rural population and workforce was much larger than the urban population and workforce. The production and growing of food was used by the...
The Plight of the Late Nineteenth Century American Farmer From the early beginnings of America to well into the nineteenth century, America has been dominantly an agricultural country. Farming and the country life have always been a great part of the American culture. Thomas Jefferson even expressed his gratitude for the farming class by saying Those who labor on the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever He had a chosen people, whose breasts He, has made His peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue. The American culture was built upon farming and agriculture, but since the end of the Civil War and the abolition of slaves, things have changed dramatically to the American lifestyle. This time brought on the Industrial Revolution, which sparked many factories and new ways of transportation across America.
The 1920’s were the singularly most influential years of farming in our country. The loss of farms following the war, and new agricultural practices resulted in the dawn of modern agriculture in our country. The shift from small family to big corporation during this time is now the basis for how our society deals with food today. Traditional farming in the 1920’s underwent a series of massive transitions following WWI as the number of farms decreased and the size of farms increased.
Agriculture was tremendously valuable to the lives of early Americans and the development of the country. It was among one of the top two most important aspects of American life, but was not quite as primary as the social and economic life. Some of the main crops grown by the earlier settlers included wheat, peas, corn, and tobacco. Farms were developed first in the Chesapeake region. Due to the abundant land and numerous streams in this region, the farm soil was richer and more ideal for farming. Farms in the northern colonies, especially New England, tended to be smaller due to smaller amounts of fields and land. Southern colonies were able to have much larger plantations and areas to plant crops. White indentured servants were sometimes hired in the earlier part of the 17th century, but black slaves became a common use of labor in the later decades of the 1600s. The New England and middle colonies in opposition, rarely hired slaves. The most abundant and common crop in every region was corn. “Every...
Farming in those days compared to today was much slower and strenuous. Inventing the seed plow was a huge breakthrough in those times. The creation made it easier for farmers to plow and produce more crops at a faster rate. Without the first invention of the seed plow, farmers throughout the years would find it harder to make a living and supply crops to suppliers. Animals play a big role in the agricultural process. Animals were used to pull the ploughs through the fields dropping the seeds and tilling the land for easier planting. Animals usually pulled the seed plow to help make the process go faster and efficient.(N.p., n.d. 2013).
In the year 2000 the United States had the largest number of tractors at 4,800,000 tractors with Japan coming in second with 2,028,000 tractors. Clearly a huge industry for the modern farmer.
American agriculture was what made the United States so successful when it first settled. They were able to produce a large amount of cotton and the export it to most of the world, becoming a large producer of this product. The united States as improving and becoming a country of industry with new inventions, policies enacted by the government and the change in economy. Therefore it was not a big surprise when technology, government policy and economics changed, in the period 1850-1900; it also changed the agriculture industry too. Technology was a major impact on the Agriculture industry during this period.
Agriculture has changed dramatically, especially since the end of World War II. Food and fibre productivity rose due to new technologies, mechanization, increased chemical use, specialization and government policies that favoured maximizing production. These changes allowed fewer farmers with reduced labour demands to produce the majority of the food and fibre.
Farming has been an occupation since 8,500 B.C. On that year in the Fertile Crescent farming first began when people grew plants instead of picking them in the wild. Then nearly 5,000 years later oxen, horses, pigs, and dogs were domesticated. During the middle ages, the nobles divide their land into three fields. The reasoning for this was to plant two and leave one to recover. This was the start of crop rotation which is a big part of farming today. Burning down forest and then moving to another area is a farming technique used by the Mayans called Slash and burn. Mayan farmers also were able to drain swampy areas to farm them buy building canals. In 1701 Jethro Tull invented the seed drill and a horse drawn how that tilled the land. In Denmark they would plant turnips in the previously unplanted field. The turnips help restore the nutrients in the ground thus crop rotation is born. In England people began moving there fields closer to each other for a more efficient way of planting. Later in the 18th century selective breeding was introduce which made bigger, stronger, and more milk producing livestock. In the mid 1800’s a steam plough was invented. By the 1950 tractors, milking machines, and combines were used by almost farmers. The latest f...
The first people that started to depend on farming for food were in Israel and Jordan in about 80000 B.C.. Farming became popular because people no longer had to rely on just searching for food to get their food. In about 3000 B.C. Countries such as Egypt and Mesopotamia started to develop large scale irrigation systems and oxen drawn plows. In about 500 B.C. the Romans started to realize that the soil needed certain nutrients in order to bare plants. They also realized that if they left the soil for a year with no plants, these important nutrients would replenish. So they started to leave half of a field fallow (unplanted). They then discovered that they could use legumes, or pulses to restore these vital nutrients, such as nitrogen, to the soil and this started the process known as rotating crops. They would plant half the field one year with a legume...