Farming, it’s what keeps the Earth’s inhabitants fed. This industry is definitely something that has changed over time. It is no question that farmers are now more efficient than ever before. This is due in part to better machinery and techniques. Many people are not familiar with the history of farming. It is truly what it is today because of where it began in the past. The main things that have changed over time consist of crop differences, farmers and land, and the tools used to cultivate and harvest the land. The Native Americans and early Americans made many improvements to farming and its technology, which is why farming is what it is today. America’s first farming era originated with the Native Americans. Scholars believe that Native …show more content…
These women were able to adapt their crops based on the different climates (4). Native Americans farmers were very friendly. They had community fields that benefited everyone. These fields differed in size depending on how much food was needed. Fields would be abandoned when they were no longer fertile (11). As for the tools Native Americans used, they could be considered rustic. They used hoes, digging sticks, and other objects made of bone to plant their crops (4). For harvesting, a wooden peg was used to beat corn off of the cob. Similarly, rice plants were beat with a rice hoop to clean the rice grains off the plants (5-7). The Native American way of farming was very rustic, but as the years went on their ways became …show more content…
It was the transition period between Native Americans and farming today as we know it. These farmers started with relatively small fields of just over three acres. About half of this land was for vegetables, while the other half was for corn (Schlebecker 30). Later, it was easier to get larger fields. Many people could acquire up to 100 acres and plant twenty-five at a time using the same technique as the Native Americans, where they rotated their fields when the ground became less fertile (Hurt 35). However, as more people came to the colonies, the government was not able to give all of them with land. As settlers traveled to the Northeast, farm sizes dropped. Many farmers in Massachusetts did not even have enough land to generate enough food for their families (Kulikoff 129,130). It was the older farmers that had the land because they settled first. They were able to own around fifty acres (130). However, more land was available in the South. Thirty-five farmers in South Carolina were responsible for cultivating a large amount of land. This expanse of land was 2,850 acres to be exact (132). Field size was able to grow once farmers started to use dikes to capture rising river water. Because of this extra water, farmers could now farm twenty miles inland (Hurt 46). Eventually, tractors came along and field sizes grew. Crop size is one thing, but what was planted during this transitional time is
According to the Great Plain Drought Area Committee Report (Doc. D), in 1879, 10 million acres of crop were harvested. 20 years later, in 1899, 50 million acres of crops were harvested, 5 times more crops than in 1879. In 1929, that number more than doubled to a 105 million acres of crops that were harvested. How did happen? Farming technology advanced rapidly from 1879 to 1929. In “The Worst Hard Time” by Timothy Egan (Doc. C), Egan wrote, “A tractor did the work of ten horses. With his new combine, Folkers could cut and thresh the grain in one swoop, using just a fraction of the labor.” The new farming technology made farming faster and it required less labor. Farmers had this new technology and used it to plow more land. Millions of acres were being plowed and farmed on and with the dry soil and no grass to keep it on the ground the dust became airborne and started grouping together and creating terrible storms.
Farming is a common agriculture source of Native Americans. They farmed maize, beans and wheat. To improve their farming, both areas, created an elaborate irrigation system. Aztecs, Incas, Hohokams were remarkable for their irrigation system.
The development of agriculture by Native Americans more than five thousand years ago sparked new cultures and innovations. Hunters who previously roamed the land like nomads established permanent villages. Corn, sun, and water became focal points for many societies and played
Economically, the Agricultural Revolution majorly impacted the way of life in the Europe, through new technological farming advancements and improved land efficiency, ultimately leading to a greater abundance of food. Compared to feudal society when people depended on small individual crop yields, many fields were combined in order to produce much larger harvests, increasing the bounty of food overall. Improved land efficiency came with new innovative ideas, including crop rotation. Allowing nutrients such as nitrogen to return to the soil, crop rotation along with fodder crops rotated the fields of crops every few years, leading to more successful yields of crops. Additional advancements in farming technology, such as the seed drill, helped
The native americans had many things that helped them survive today,you will learn about the desert regions
The first people to start specializing their plants into actual agricultural crops were still working with mostly wild plants. Over time, they used experimentation to figure out how to make better crops. Controlling
Most native people lived in impermanent settlements, and in more settled groups, women tended the crops while the men hunted, fished, gathered fuel, and cleared fields.
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.
During 1865-1900 technology made a huge impact in agriculture. What changed America was the expansion of railroads, limiting laws on goods that farmers sold and transportation of goods. Farmers began to harvest vast areas of needed crops such as wheat, cotton, and even corn. In document D shows you a picture of The Wheat Harvest in 1880.
During the time period of 1865-1900 American agriculture changed greatly. Several components such as technology, government policy, and economic conditions caused agriculture to transform in the way it did. The main advancements in technology were new farming machinery and the growth in the railroad, both benefited the farmers grow and move crops. The government policies seemed to never favor the farmers, they passed laws making it harder for farmers to make a living. The economic conditions for farmers became rough due to the price of crops dropping from overproduction.
Gradually, as the farms grew, there was a shift from merely farming to provide for the
The rich farmers used all new mechanical tractors to dig up 10X the amount of farmland they needed but with the more farmland came the need for more water and the drought was just around the corner and i think you know the rest. Also withe the new tractors they needed more land so they went to the fields of short grass just destroying everything around them like digging up short grass and messing up the terrain to make more farmland.
The Archaic Era was the beginning of many new discoveries in prehistory. Agriculture was the most significant event in this time period, because it made life for the Native Americans easier and more sustainable. Agriculture was the first source of natural resources for the Native Americans, and it gave the people more time for relaxing rather than watching over their herds. Another milestone for the Native American people was the invention of maize. Maize is what we call corn today. “Maize is not something Native Americans found-they genetically engineered it.” The new invention, not only provided the Natives with more food, but it also provided more nutritional value opposed to the wheat and barley. Because the food supply was increasing,
The first beginning we had hunter and gatherers, and that became something that everybody started doing. People would use resources around them, and they would not stay in permanent settlements. Than a new life began and it was called Emergence of Agriculture. People know started having permanent settlements, the population has became bigger, and their health might be becoming shaky. These changes might have been better or worse.
It all started because of the slash and burn cultivation, which consisted of cutting down all organic life in a certain field, setting it on fire, and coming back some time after, when the soil would have been much more efficient of supporting the area. This technique started since hunters and gatherers were constantly on the move and realized that after forest fires, the land had much more potential for growing plants more effectively. Once again, this was not considered to be progress because these people were never aiming for this result, it was just a coincidence that first occurred in Southwest Asia. Furthermore, this was mainly the beginning of horticulture, a lifestyle based on plant cultivation, which landed between gathering and