A Look At Farming Until The Dirty Thirties Essay

“Much of the Roaring '20s was a continual cycle of debt for the American farmer, stemming from falling farm prices and the need to purchase expensive machinery.” (“The Farming Problem”). Tractors had just graced the U.S. markets which boosted the production of goods greatly. Most would think this was good, but it was more of a problem, the farmers would overproduce goods without enough people to buy them all which made the goods almost worthless. The farmers had to borrow money to pay for their tractors, assuming they would be able to pay back the debt with the money that the tractor made, but when they found they could not it set them up having no money and a debt with no way to pay it back. “When the stock market crashed in 1929 sending prices in an even more downward cycle, many American farmers wondered if their hardscrabble lives would ever improve.” (“The Farming Problem”). The stock market crashing made the stocks the farmers though they would be able to get some money from virtually worthless.

In the time period between 1865 and 1900 technology,government policy,and economic conditions really changed American agriculture. The technology made farming more efficient,and more profitable. Government policies both helped and hindered farmers with helping them transport their products,but they also “stole” from the farmers to help make the government more money. The economic conditions helped farmers with selling more products,and helping cities grow;along with starving families almost to death. All of these coming together really changed American agriculture.

This helped farmers because they wouldn't have to put as much water on crops that needed a lot they could distribute all of the water evenly to all of the crops or fields they had. The crop and agricultural industry and production has changed a lot since the 1900’s a large reason it has changed so much is because there is so much more new technology in the world and the business alone. Crop production from 1970 to 2010 in Yuma has increased tremendously it has done so as Yuma as improved over the years. The winter used to be a big issue before we got a lot of technology the winter was an issue because a lot of the crops would freeze. Now many farmers have what they call winter crops these crops are plants and such that grow very well in the winter when it gets cold now in Yuma it hardly ever gets cold enough to freeze a crop but when it used to it was a very big issue. The increase of the crops was nearly a 6-fold increase in just vegetable production alone since 1970 it has led to many more increases in more than just vegetables which are a lot considering that only 10 percent of the land used to be for multi-crop

Prior to the Dust Bowl, American travelers flooded into Colorado because of the Gold Rush of 1858. In spite of the fields of Colorado being in an extremely dry state, sponsors and designers reached a conclusion that preservation of water would be important to cultivate without the advantage of a watering system framework. While looking for effective cultivating strategies for this unpleasant landscape, Congress passed the Homestead Act of 1862 which permitted families to claim land. This urged a large number of families to move to the territory. Indeed, even in this way, families and ranchers would rely on upon the little rainfall to pulverize the dirt by delving more profound into it to bring the moist part on top so that the topsoil would

The Southern Plains was a shortgrass prairie that was home to farmers and their livestock, but received little to no rain. John Wesley Powell “determined that 20 inches of rain was the minimum for successful farming” (Doc. E). According to the “Actual Precipitation for Dallam County, Texas” chart, that area in the Southern Plains fell below the recommended rainfall from 1924-1940, with the annual precipitation ranging from 9.78 inches to 15.32 inches (Doc. E). This meant that other areas inside the Southern Plains did not receive much rain as well. Even so, farmers continued to plow their land even though there was barely any rain, or grass. For example, in 1929, 105 million acres were harvested (Doc. D), but during that year, the precipitation

With 30 percent of Americans already agitated by the crumbling prices of agricultural goods, the severe drought known as the Dust Bowl, lasting nearly ten years, wiped out farmers crops, and carries with it implications of prolonging the end of the Great Depression. Due to the advantageous agricultural

The end of the 19th century brought to farmers astringent policies enforced by railroad companies, once stable cash crops like cotton and wheat now selling at such low profit margins due to inflation that farmers continued to end up in the red, spikes in foreign competition due to leaps and bounds in transportation, and all of this in the wake of a devastating drought that brought with it the degradation of businesses throughout the west. This agricultural depression culminated into the Populist movement, founded on the premise of the politicalization of the farmers plight. However, much of the negative stigma put onto the precipitants of the industrial revolution by farmers was under false pretense, when the dry and arid conditions of the

In order to understand drought we must first understand what drought means. Drought is defined by Merriam-Webster dictionary as “A period of dryness especially when prolonged; specifically: one that causes extensive damage to crops or prevents their successful growth” (Merriam-Webster).The southwestern United States is considered, for the most part, an arid region. That doesn’t mean that it is a

Nonetheless, by the mid 1880’s, it became too much for the markets to handle as more products were being produced than ever before, leading to the declining of prices and no real profit. Through the expansion of white agriculture, farmers faced many bumps in the road. As the rainfall increased in the 1870’s, farmers experienced a variety of troubles such as fencing their lands to enclose it and protect it from the herds of cattlemen. And because wood and stone fences were too expensive, they turned to the use of barbed wire. Another problem was water. The farmers relied heavily on the flow of water to their plantations from rivers and streams through the drilling of wells. However, after 1887, they experience a dry spell where some farmers were left to turn to planting dry-resistant crops and by using deep wells pumped by windmills. Nonetheless, such a big problem could only be solved with large scale irrigation, something the federal government wasn’t prepared to fund. Due to crop prices falling and production getting more and more expensive, thousands of farmers fell into debt that they cannot afford to pay and were therefore forced to leave their farms. Farmers were no longer self sufficient and became reliant on store bought supplies, bankers and interest rates, railroads, national markets and overall world supply and demand. Later in the 1880’s, overproduction of crops led to the declining of prices and caused millions of American farm families to fall into distress as the economy continued to decline. Furthermore, the farmers faced grievances surrounding railroads, institutions managing credit banks, loans companies and insurance corporations as it was harder to pay back loans, and unfair pricing as some goods cost more than others. American farming soon no longer was an image cherished by Americans, but was instead a declining operation competing

Prior to 1870, the US Southern Plains region is a vibrant prairie world. Then, deep rooted weeds cover the entire Great Plains, where the soil is fertile, animal all running around, a harmonious coexistence between man and nature scenes. After 1870, the US government has enacted a number of laws, encourage the development in the area of the Great Plains. Especially after the outbreak of the World War 1, by the impact of soaring world wheat prices, the southern Great Plains into the "big Reclamation" period, which farmers destroyed all grasslands, planted wheat. After decades of development, from the Great Plains grasslands of the world to "American breadbasket." At the same time, where natural vegetation has been severely damaged, topsoil exposed under the wind.

This article is mainly about a dust bowl that made farming very hard on farmers ruining their soil and making farmers have to move and abandon their houses. The main effect on farming was “Between 1930 and 1940, the southwestern Great Plains region of the United States suffered a severe drought.” The dust bowl made it hard to farm because without water you can't really grow plants. The last effect was “These problems came from the need to purchase expensive machinery as farming technology was changing, and from falling prices for food.” This made it harder for farmers to make money and keep up to update with farming equipment.

To achieve this goal, I have organized my paper into four main sections, two of which have sub-sections. In the first section, I provide an account of three important events in nineteenth century agricultural history: population and technological changes, the distribution of scientific new knowledge, and farming’s influence on education. In the second section, I discuss three nineteenth century farming handbooks in connection with the important events described in the first section. I end my paper with a third section that offers research questions that could be answered in

However, many points in the history of agriculture are significant, looking ahead to the great inventions that would make farming easier. Before the invention of Cyrus McCormick’s reaper, grains were cut with scythes, then raked and tied all by hand. The reaper, pulled by horses, cut and gathered these grains, saving the labor and time of early farmers. Another famous farm equipment invention was Eli Whitney’s cotton gin. The gin worked quite efficiently as teeth pulled the cotton fibers through slits just small enough the seeds could not go through, leaving the cleaned cotton separate from the seeds. As cotton was a largely planted cash crop, the cotton gin saved laborers extensive amounts of time; 1000 pounds of cotton could be cleaned with the cotton gin to every 5 pounds cleaned by hand. One of the most famous agricultural inventions was the first steel plow by John Deere, allowing farmers to work the land in their favor with a step up from wooden and iron plows. Farm equipment has improved even more to what we have today, making it possible for farmers to operate more efficiently on large amounts of land in a fraction of the time it would have taken in earlier

The dark skies were filled with soil and dust that rained down on the American Midwest. These powerful black blizzards would label this period of time as the Dirty Thirties or Dust Bowl. At the beginning of the 1930s, the Great Plains farmers were the most successful in the nation. As one of the worst man-made disasters the widespread farming used harsh farming techniques that exposed the topsoil. Then a series of devastating dust storms hit the southern Great Plains of the United States between 1932 and 1939, damaging the ecology and agriculture structures. The Dust Bowl of the 1930’s was a significant event in US History because it completely stopped agricultural production for almost a decade in the West, caused widespread

Previously, The Dust Bowl was thought to have been caused by completely natural phenomena, without influence from human practices. Even though the southward shift of the jetstream that would have brought rain was a natural occurrence, the other large contributing factors to The Dust Bowl were human-induced. The uprooting of native grasses by continuous harvesting from the soil was a key, human-caused factor in the erosion of topsoil. Without native grasses, topsoil is insufficiently held in place because the roots of the grasses functioned to support drought prevention and protect against wind erosion. In addition to a lack of rain and an absence of the means to preserve the little water there was, the boom and bust of the wheat market also contributed to The Dust Bowl. There was first a large increase in demand for wheat products, so farmers plowed more land in order to meet that demand. However, as inventory of wheat increased, its value decreased. To try to make up for the loss of money due to the decreasing value of wheat, farmers plowed even more land. This feat would not have been possible without the mechanization of farming. Large farming machines made it possible to do the work of a dozen men in less time than it would have taken an independent worker. Relentlessly farming the land made it so vulnerable to erosion that strong winds removed the topsoil, which was falsely believed to be a perpetual resource, in the years 1930-1936.