Agrarian Reform History

Moreover, the document also helps visualize the linking of the regions in which national markets emerged, as well urbanization and industry expansion. To extend on this idea, immigration grew alongside industry expansion. For more land became accessible for sale, which was an advantage to those whom jobs (like those building railroads or working in companies near them) called for them to live near. Although the most convenient way to transport goods was using the railroad, it also worsened the economic hardship that farmers had, for the prices that they had to pay to export their goods, were quite elevated.

She states, “so important were these family houses to Basque villagers that each was given a name which the heir and his wife assumed”(Davis 6). Davis is portraying how property had a great importance for peasants of certain villages and how it was a major part of their lives. Davis also mentions in the case of Sanxi that he “could not have sold it easily if he had wanted to, for the Fors-that is, the customs of the Labourd-prohibited the alienation of patrimonial goods except in cases of dire necessity and then only with the consent of other interested kin” (Davis 8). Sanxi’s lack of option to sell his property, unless given approval by other family who are uninterested in the property, shows that in certain villages peasants were concerned with maintaining their property within their family. Davis also contrasts this social norm of family property with explaining the social norms when dealing with property in other villages. Sanxi moved to new village called Artigat. It is stated, “What was really different from the Basque country was the way the land moved, both in inheritance and in sales. Here in the plain below the Pyrenees there was very little effort among the common people to hold the family property together” (Davis 11). Davis is doing a successful job of portraying property as economic means but also as a way of social standing.

In addition to agriculture success, new technological advancements came from crop exchangement. New farming equipment , such as the plow, improved the New World’s economy and health. This technology advancement is important because it allowed a large area of land to be cultivated at a time, speeding up the farming process. This enabled towns to be developed around farms from crops being grown at a faster rate and land that could now be cultivated.

After the Civil War there were many factors that contributed the changes that occurred in farming in America. Among them was the drive for the South to renew and regain what had been lost due to the war. Leaders saw it as a time to diversify and turn towards industrialization. The Industrial revolution was underway and with it brought many new inventions that would lead to growth in the farming industry. The wide open space between the East and the West called “The Frontier” was open for homesteading. New immigrants with their farming knowledge and ability were flooding the East and West gates of the U.S. This was a time in American history when Americans

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

Technology greatly transformed American agriculture from just plain farming to commercial farming. The mechanization of farming made farming easier and more profitable. As shown in Document D technology was helping farmers, making farming more easier and they were able to do many jobs quicker. But, Farmers couldn’t afford to send crops to other places At the beginning of the 1840s the railroad began to transform American agriculture, by the 1860’s all states east of the Mississippi had rail service. As shown in Document B there were multiple railroads all around the country. The farmers were ecstatic about this new technology because they could send their crops to other areas, when before they didn’t have the money to be able to do so. Other new technologies were arriving such as the mechanical reaper and the steel plow.

Following the Civil War, a second industrial revolution in America brought many changes to the nation’s agriculture sector. The new technologies that were created transformed how farmers worked and the way in which the sector functioned. Agriculture expanded and became more industrial. Meanwhile government policies, or lack of them for a while, and hard economic conditions put difficult strains on farmers and their occupation. These changes in technology, economic conditions, and government policy from 1865 to 1900 transformed and improved agriculture while leaving farmers in hardship.

From 1880-1906, western farmers were affected by multiple issues that they saw as threats to their way of life. The main threats to the farmers were railroads, trusts, and the government, because these institutions all had the power to drastically affect the ability of the farmers to make profits. Therefore, the farmers were not wrong to feel frustration toward those institutions when the institutions caused the farmers to live lives of increasingly extreme poverty.

Olsson, Tore C. Sharecroppers and Campesinos: The American South, Mexico, and the Transnational Politics of Land Reform in the Radical 1930s. The Journal of Southern History Volume LXXXI, No. 3, August 2015.

work for landowners in exchange for food and shelter. Another economic change was the discovery of

When everything started to become more industrialized it was difficult for the farmers because for so long, most of the wealth in the United States was from farming and agriculture—which was done with manual labor opposed to machinery. When manufacturing began to transcend the wealth that the farmers had become accustomed to, they began to follow the trend of commercialization so that they would not lose all of their wealth. As a

     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

The outcome of this farming change was higher access of food. The enclosure Movement also forced people into Industrial Revolution for example; farmers who worked in the farming industry where replaced by farming machines and where left homeless forced to find new jobs in the industrial revolution. Big business was also a change that created Mass Production. Mass Production shifted people from production at home, to production in large factories in cities. Mass production also allowed for lower prices on the good produced.

2. Opening of new agricultural lands (West) - more and more land offered to people, land needed to be develop. Farmer could maintain more land than before because of

The Spanish colonization in the Philippines lead to us to make some questions in our mind on how does the Filipino survived? Even though they