A Reaction Paper on the Calatagan Farmer

The land helped form their mentality as they worked their way across it and through it by working on their souls.

As a person that has grown most of my own food, without chemicals or engine powered equipment, for the last 15 years and lesser so for many more years I can relate to some degree what it may have been like for a farmer in the 1800’s (I even live in a house built in 1850).

Now, when it came to ownership of the land the Native Americans were known for hunting so, they needed their hunting land as well as land to grow crops. They were open for sharing land, “The South’s native people had well-defined hunting territories, fishing grounds, and agricultural plots which they vigorously defended against encroachment. However, they did not regard land as property that could be transferred in perpetuity to another individual or group”. However, the Europeans did not think the land should be shared. So, when they came over they took the land away from the

White farmers in the South and Midwest faced many problems after the Civil War, economically, politically, and socially. Many farmers had a system of cultivating unimproved land, and then selling it for a profit before moving farther West. However, after the Civil War, many states had no increase or barely an increase in land value. Thus, farmers using this process were no longer earning a profit. In other states, the land value did increase greatly. However, with the coming of income taxes and the raise in property taxes, these farmers still suffered. In addition, there was a lot of tension between railroad companies and farmers because railroad companies were overcharging farmers for the transportation of crops. However, because of a monopoly,

In order to do this, the new Agricultural Adjustment Administration paid landowners to take property out of production. What ended up happening was

According to National Geographic, 40% of the Earth today is farmland—soil being manipulated to feed the 7.6 billion human beings on this world. We have taken over this world like ants swarming to a piece of rotting fruit, without much thought to the organisms that have been on Earth long before us. Our lives may be easier in that we do not have to forge for our food or water anymore, but with the stress of today’s world, was the tradeoff worth the natural land? Willa Cather’s novel, O Pioneers! brings attention to the way we choose to use the land, whether it is in our best interests, the land’s, or both. The characters in O Pioneers! demonstrate how in order to maintain a successful relationship with the land we live on, it is necessary to be able to both adapt to the land and mold it to fit our physical, emotional, and spiritual needs.

later, brought rural farmers’ grievances into the picture after their land was destroyed during the

Sense of place is a perspective of geography that can be seen in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. As noted in The Human Mosaic sense of place is a term used to connote the humanistic view of geography, it seeks to understand the unique character of individual regions and places. In The Grapes of Wrath, farmers and their families are being kicked off of their land, when one family is selling all of their belongings one exclaims “This land, this red land, is us; and the flood years and the dust years and the drought years, are us. We can’t start again… And when the owner men told us to go, that’s us; and when the tractor hit the house, that’s us until we’re dead.” This was land was their place, they made memories there. Power and Ideology

overproduction. People in America thought there was so much land that they did not worry

     High prices forced farmers to concentrate on one crop. The large-scale farmers bought expensive machines, increasing their crop yield. This caused the smaller farmers to be left behind. The small farmers could no longer compete and were forced give up their farms and look for jobs in the cities. The smaller farmers

With no land to farm, and prices dropping everyday, the landowners simply would push the sharecroppers (some of whom had lived on the same land for generations) off the property.

Land was a common resource village leaders could assign to families to live on but not to own. Indians believed that the land was common to everyone and can’t be sold because it doesn’t belong to anyone. Black Hawk, a leader of the Sauk Tribe, said, “The Great Spirit gave it to his children to live upon and cultivate as far as necessary for their subsistence, and so long as they occupy and cultivate it they have the right to the soil”.

hard for people to buy their own land, which is why it was only a

The definition of what America is, and furthermore what an American is, has been eternally elusive. However, it can be reasonably said that the vision of America rests upon freedom of expression, the right to property, and self-determination. These ideas are explored in one European’s examination of American agricultural society in the late 18th century. Letters from an American Farmer by J. Hector St. John de Crèvecœur illustrates the gilded nature of the early vision of America; one that appears to be simplistic and based in freedom, but lies on a foundation of oppression and greed.

had sold only the right to use the land, not the land itself. They did