MACALESTER COLLEGE

I. Origins

American agriculture has its origins in two separate cultural hearths. It is a European system with a strong influences from people indigenous to North America, who in turn based their crop patterns on plants first domesticated in Meso-America. Colonial farming developed during the time when European agriculture was going through a revolution and turning away from the three field rotation pattern of medieval times.

Beginning in Roman times, Europeans practiced a rotation of three crops: a food grain, a fodder crop, and in the third year, let the land lay fallow. A cereal grain, normally wheat but in colder areas rye, was grown during the first year. The grain was sown in the fall and lay dormant through the winter. It sprouted in the spring and was harvested in the summer. After the food grain was harvested, the fields were plowed and during the next spring a fodder crop such as barley was planted. Barley could either be fed to animals or brewed into beer. Because the grains were planted by broadcasting, the fields could not be weeded. Thus, by the end of the second year weeds were a major problem and the soil was also depleted. During the third year the farmers plowed down the weeds and left the land unplanted for a season to regenerate its fertility through the process of weathering the base rock material.

Although this system persisted for centuries, it did not produce great surpluses. The grain fields produced a harvest of 6-10 times the amount of seed sown. Therefore, about 1/6 to 1/10 of each crop had to be preserved for the following years' seed stock. Hunger was a constant companion of these farmers. There was little grain to feed to animals, and so the cattle were small. Meat was a great luxury. The milk produced in summer was preserved as cheese and butter for consumption during the winter.

Farmers lived in villages and tilled small fields that were scattered throughout the village's territory. This meant that most households had a mixture of land types and no one family had all the good land. The scattered fields also meant that a local environmental problem, such as a hailstorm, would not destroy a family's entire crop.

This subsistence-based agricultural village produced demands for goods from afar, and so trade was a part of the economy. Salt, spices, ironware and other craft items were brought to the farm hamlet by traveling merchants. In addition, there were seasonal fairs where trade and entertainment was offered.

In some regions a seasonal grazing pattern developed which involved taking animals to wild alpine lands to graze. In the high pastures, young animals were fattened and milk made into cheese by shepherds and the youth of the village.

These villages maintained ancient elements of fertility religions, which were developed in Mesopotamia and other parts of the Mediterranean cultural hearth. Spring was welcomed as the time of nature's rebirth. Midsummer, a time of plenty and comfort, was celebrated with gusto. The harvest was marked with a variety of festivities--all of which embodied some form of thanksgiving. The winter solstice was also noted, but the deep mid-winter was not always a time for joy and happiness.

This Roman pattern of agriculture was spread through the Empire and was adapted to regional and local environmental conditions. In Mediterranean climes in the summer, small grains were complemented with olive trees and a variety of vegetables. The bounty of seafood also provided much protein. People living in areas a distance from the seas suffered from a deficiency of iodine in their diets because they could not easily get seafood or sea salt.

Imperial Roman agriculture was the base for three forms of North American agriculture--farming-mixed crop and livestock, Mediterranean, and ranching. North American mixed crop and livestock farming is a derivative of the agriculture practiced in the Northwestern portions of the Roman Empire. The agriculture landscape of European three field agricultures had few structures and essentially no fences. Barns were box-like structures which a central threshing floor that was accessed by large sets of double doors on either side of the barn. When the grain was being separated from the chaff, both sets of doors were opened and the wind currents carried away the dust. The few animals had their special structures-stables for horses, byres for cows, styes for pigs, folds for cheep, and coops for chickens.

When North America was colonized, Northern European farmers were beginning to use new crops and increase the importance of livestock in the economy. The most significant new crops were turnips and clovers. The turnips were used for animal feed and were planted in rows. The row crops can be cultivated and therefore it was not necessary to fallow the land to control weeds. A clover is a legume that fixes nitrogen and thereby increases the soil's fertility. Clover can be cut as hay or grazed as pasture. In addition, clovers require a cover crop to get it established. Clover seed and rye or barley were planted together.

The result of these innovations was a new crop rotation system that operated on a four-year cycle. In the first year, a bread grain crop was planted, typically wheat. In the second year, one of a variety of root crops (turnips, beets, potatoes) was grown. In the third year, feed grain and clover were planted and the feed grain was harvested in the fall. The clover was either harvested or grazed during the fourth and final year.

This change was truly revolutionary because it was no longer necessary for farmers to leave 1/3 of their arable land idle. The new rotation produced more winter feed for animals. The farmers practiced selective breeding and developed larger animals. They switched from oxen to horses as draft animals. Horses can do more work than oxen but are more expensive to maintain because they need grain and better fodder. The increase in the number of animals increased the manure supply. This very significant development enabled farmers to actually improve the fertility of their fields. This increase in agricultural capacity came at the time of urban growth and so a market was created for surplus which encouraged additional investments and innovations.

Without the growth of urban markets, farmers would have little incentive to increase productivity. As it was, urban merchants and members of the gentry became fascinated with the scientific agriculture and promoted developments in animal and plant breeding. Such ideas were discussed in papers and spread widely.

John Frazer Hart and other scholars have established the Lancaster Plain in Southeastern Pennsylvania as the seeds bed for the mixed crop and livestock or "Corn Belt" agriculture of the United States. This plain is the only extensive tract of excellent farm land on the seaboard. The land was settled by German Mennonite farmers in the first decade of the eighteenth century. The combination of land and people was so successful that a generation later, the farmers invented the Conestoga Wagon to carry their bountiful harvests to Philadelphia for export. The system was so productive that farmers in France complained about cheap wheat imported from North America.

The colonial farmers added maize, or Indian corn, to the European crop rotation. Corn proved to be very adaptable to the concept of crop rotation and fertilization. It replaced the root crops in the four-year crop rotation. Soon, farmers were growing wheat for bread, corn to feed cattle and hogs, oats for horses, rye for the production of whiskey and vegetables and orchards of European fruits such as apples, cherries and peaches. The indigenous American crops of squash, potatoes and pumpkins had important roles in the gardens on these farms. By the Revolution, 50% of the grain produced in this region was sold for export.

After the Revolution, the growth of urban markets marked the first step in the development of mixed crop and livestock farming--the feed lot. Farmers in southeastern Pennsylvania began to fatten cattle produced farther west by feeding them corn. Thus a new system was created. Wheat was still grown for bread and cash, then corn as a fodder crop, then oats and clover--oats for horses and clover for the cattle. The prodigious amount of manure generated by the cattle was returned to the soil. Farms increased in productivity and large farmers became more prosperous.

The mixed farming required different landscape features and buildings. Animals need shelters and had to be constrained within walls, hedges or fences. Crops needed storage facilities and there continued to be a need for a floor for threshing wheat. Pens for feeding animals and collecting manure also made the farm more efficient. Into this mixture was brought the Swiss barn. This was a two-story structure with animals on the first floor and a threshing floor on the second. It contained bins for storing grain and a fenced barnyard or stockyard on the south side. It also contained pens for horses and cattle.

The key aspects of mixed farming--crop rotation, mixed crop and livestock rearing, and distinctive barns--were transferred to southwestern Ohio where they would become the norm for the agricultural heartland and the continent.

As the early immigrants passed through Pennsylvania on their way down the great valley to the southwest, they observed the essentials of Lancaster agriculture. The local environment of the frontier encouraged farmers to make modifications to the system of crops and livestock. Farmers in Southwest Virginia dropped wheat from the system and increased the roles of corn and tobacco. They stored corn on the cob in roughly built small log barns. Later, planks replaced logs and the ancestor of the Midwest corn crib was born. In the poor hill country, crop rotation was replaced with the rotation of fields, a practice called brush fallow.

In the early nineteenth century, all roads west seemed to lead to southwestern Ohio. Three streams of immigrant farmers converged and fashioned what became the fundamental form of modern mixed farming. From New England and New York came farmers who specialized in wheat as a cash crop. Pennsylvanians brought mixed crop and livestock and the use of manure. Virginians brought corn and tobacco. These crops were grown in a rotation that featured corn rather than wheat. Corn was planted in a field the first year. Then it was followed by wheat or sometimes oats. The small grains were followed by clover or alfalfa. The crops were fed to animals and which in turn were driven to markets in the east. Hogs fit best in the system because they can digest corn efficiently and sows produced litters of several piglets each year so herds expand rapidly. Corn was profitable but it had its special needs. It originated in the subtropics and needed a long growing season. It needs fertile soil and plenty of moisture during the growing season. Therefore the basic pattern is modified away from the core, but there is also some variation within the central region as well. The eastern area,Ohio and east Indiana, is an area of relatively small farms where corn is fed to hogs. The central Corn Belt in eastern Illinois is an area of large farms that grow grain and do not feed animals. The western Corn Belt in central Iowa had medium-sized farms where producers grew corn and grains o feed both hogs and cattle. To the north, the mixed crops and livestock farming of the Corn Belt gradually changed to a pattern where corn is grown for silage and much land was devoted to hay or pastures. To the west, where areas receive low rainfall, small grains--especially wheat--became the dominant crop. No animals are raised. To the south, more land is given to hay and pasture. There are also regions that have specialized in livestock rearing, such as the limestone basins town of northern Tennessee and Alabama. Horse and mule raising was extremely developed here in the nineteenth century. The lush pastures of these areas produced the prodigious numbers of animals needed in the United States before the internal combustion engine transformed life. Tobacco was also an early cash crop in this region and has continued to be important.

The core areas of the Corn Belt were developed first along the rivers, where forests were available for fuel and the waterways provided easy access to markets. The heavy wet soils were avoided until economical ways to drain them were developed in the mid 19th century. The railroads opened up the prairie for corn farms and John Deere invented the self-scouring plowshare that enabled men to break the tough prairie sod. By the 1870s, a major interregional system of trade was developing. The farmers began to buy cattle razed in ranches on the western plain along with their own pigs and chickens. They grew corn for two years, then a year of oats and finally alfalfa. The fertile prairie soils, if supplemented with manure, could produce bountiful corn harvests. The crop rotation kept pests and weeds under control. The feed lot industry was made possible by the railroad connection to the west and the rapidly growing demand for meat in the industrial cities of the great lakes shore and the north coast seaboard.

The root of the western ranches and Midwestern field lots was the southwestern edge of the Roman Empire on the Iberian Peninsula. On the high dry plains, cattle rearing developed along with a culture which featured low density frontier settlement. Spanish cattle reached the Rio Grande Valley about the time of the American Revolution, and by 1800 there were extensive herds. The Andalusian stock was brought to the United States and mixed with French breeds from Louisiana and those from Tennessee. The herds were usually wild and became secure in the environment. Eventually, a recognizable Texas animal emerged from the Mexican stock. The Texan had very long horns, light bodies, long legs and were very self-reliant. Texans slaughtered them for their hides and tallow. In about 1835, Texans took over the herds south of San Antonio and learned how to handle them on horse back. Prior to the American Civil War, there was not a significant market for these animals and for the most part, the Texas herds grew unmolested. There were perhaps 4,800,000 head of cattle in southern Texas.

In 1879, Texas ranchers learned that their cattle could be sold in Midwestern markets for 10 times the Texas price. All they had to do was march the animals some 1200-1800 miles to a market. This concept was consistent with experiences in other regions. Cattle herds from Wales were driven to markets in eastern England. Farmers in Eastern Pennsylvania received herds from further west about the time of the Revolution. These cattle were going to have to walk a lot further, however.

The cattle drives got off to a slow start. The first railroad at Sedalia, Missouri lay beyond a zone of farmers who did not welcome the herds. In 1867, J. G. McCoy solved the problem by convincing the owner of the Hannibal, St. Joe and Kansas Pacific railroad to extend their track and build a stockyard in Abilene, Kansas. Soon, thousands of animals were headed for the cow town at the end of the rails. These herds were the source of stock for the Northern ranges where hunters were removing the vast herds of buffalo.

The ranching system was made possible by the land tenure system on the high plains. Essentially, the grass was free. The federal government owned the land and the ranchers claimed water rights. Grazing was limited to 12 miles from water, so the ranchers were spread out up the valleys. However, the free range era was short lived. Barbed wire fencing was invented in Illinois in 1874. Cheap, effective fencing involved selective breeding and allowed farmers to secure fields. As a result, cattle ranching shifted to stocking. Instead of raising cattle to maturity before shipping them to market, young cattle are sold to farmers who fattened them for slaughter.

Today the ranch land still produces calves for feed lots, but there has been another major shift. Large feed lots have been developed in well-watered places on the plains and feed is transported to the animals instead of the animals being transported to the sources of feed.

In between the western ranches and the corn farms of the humid Midwest lay large wheat farms. The Wheat Belt is divided into two parts. In the northern region, hard wheat is planted in the spring. To the south, soft wheat is planted in the fall and harvested the next summer.

The wheat belt was developed by farmers from the eastern United States, along with a strong mixture of immigrants directly from Northern Europe. They came from regions where crop and livestock farming was the norm. They arrived on the agricultural frontier at a prosperous time. Growing cities and the lumber camps in the Grand Lake forest required an ever-expanding supply of food. The settlement was fostered by the Homestead Act and later sales of land granted by the federal government to railroad builders.

At first the settlers participated in subsistence farming, which soon shifted towards the sale of wheat for a profit. Although somewhat perishable, wheat and flour can be shipped long distances with relative ease. Mississippi River steamboats and the growing railroad network meant that farmers could get their harvest and markets in the east. Furthermore, in the 1850s and during the Civil War, prices were good and improving. Although there was a decline in prices after the Civil War, mechanization enabled farms to remain profitable. Railroad companies encouraged farmers to settle along their tracks. In addition, the companies laid out turns and constructed storage facilities for holding harvests. When the wheat fever was at its peak in eastern Minnesota, a reporter from Harper's Weekly visited the Winona area during the harvest season. He reported that nearly everyone had wheat on the brain and that the whole countryside was covered with a fine wheat dust from the wheat harvest.

Wheat production raced ahead all through the 1870s and through the last quarter of the century. In the northern sector, settlement and commercial wheat production moved from the forested river valleys to the uplands occupied by the Big Woods. From the forests, the wave of settlement moved on to the long grass prairies and finally west and northwest on the short grass region of the Red River of the north and the dry steppes beyond.

The cultivation of the northern prairie followed the removal of the vast herds of buffalo and changes in the perception of the region in the minds of Americans. For several years after the first traveler reports on the region, the high plains were called the Great American Dessert. The area was thought to both too dry and too cold for settlements. The success of the ranching industry changed these perceptions, however, and produced concrete evidence that it was possible for the region to not only be livable but also productive. The federal government espoused an aggressive settlement policy based on the Homestead Act. As settlement moved towed the dry margins the minimum size of homesteads was increased from 160 acres to 640. In addition, railroads were given enormous grants of land to sell off, which financed the construction of the transcontinental routes.
Nonetheless, the government policies would have failed if entrepreneurs had not discovered a product that could be profitability grown in the short summers. That croup was hard spring wheat. Unlike the soft variety grown in Kansas, Nebraska and the Ohio Valley, spring wheat can not easily be milled with the ancient technology of mill stones. Fortunately, European millers developed iron rollers which cracked the hard grain and passed it through a series of rollers which produced a fine flour. When blasts of air were directed across the flour the chaff particles were blown away a superior white flour resulted. This technology caused a boom in the northern plains and prairie Provinces of Canada. Because farmers were few in number huge corporate farms called bonanza farms were opened by eastern investors. Using migrant labor and hundreds of horses these mechanized farms produced mountains of wheat for the mills of Minneapolis, Buffalo, New York, as well as smaller cities.

As the farmers on the high plains were perfecting dry farming techniques and converted the former buffalo ranges to fields, farmers in the old wheat region shifted to the corn-hog combination that yielded higher market prices than wheat.

King Wheat, as its was called in the nineteenth century, proved to a be an excellent frontier crop. As the agriculture settlement process matured, wheat was replaced by more profitable crops everywhere by the Great Plains. Here farmers specialized with vengeance. At first oats were grown, in addition to wheat, to be used as feed for the horses and mules needed to run the planting, harvesting and threshing machines. However, farmers turned quickly to steam engines and then to internal combustion engines as more efficient alternatives to the expensive horses.

From it earliest years, wheat farming was a global business. Once established, the bonanza farms and the smaller successors could each out-produce regional and national consumption rates. Minneapolis millers sent salesmen to Europe to convince bakers that north American wheat was both cheap and high quality. Entrepreneurs in Battle Creek, Michigan, Red Wing, Minnesota and Minneapolis went even further. They invented exciting new ways to eat wheat and oats for breakfast. Soon Wheaties--Breakfast of Champions--Cheerios, Shredded Wheat and Puffed Wheat were filling store shelves and the stomachs of growing children.

Early years on the plains corresponded to a period of high rainfall. This prompted observers to postulate that rain somehow was increased by cultivation. Unfortunately, normal dry weathers returned and those farmers not well versed in dry land farming techniques were forced out. In the 1930s a major drought turned large areas of the central and southern plains into a "Dust Bowl" and people left the area. Many families packed up and drove west to California where they worked as migrant laborers on fruit and vegetable farms. Settlement on the wheat frontier has waned ever since.

By 1920, most wheat growing counties reached their peak population. Great storage elevators dominated the small towns, and during War time the small towns prospered. Grain marketing and milling firms connected the isolated farmsteads and small towns to markets and consumers around the world. The mutual dependent relationships among farmers, millers and shippers produced large profits and a great deal of tension. Soon political pressure from farmers forced the states to establish rules and regulations to govern the shipping and storing of grain. For example, many states established State Railroad and Warehouse Commissions to monitor the process of getting the grain to markets.

The increased mechanization of wheat production decreased the size of the labor force needed for farming. In addition, farmers realized they needed vast acreage to achieve a return on their investments in machinery and seed. Thus large farmers became the norm. As elderly farmers retired they either sold or leased their land to neighbors. Because the grain farms had no animals, farmers did not need to live on the land during the winter. For a time, terms like "sidewalk" or "suitcase" farmers were used to describe the migratory farmers. Farmers lead an urban or industrialized life style. Large machines applied seed, fertilizer, pesticides and herbicides to the land. Seed and chemicals were bought from large cooperatives of corporations. Market reports came from cities hundreds of miles distant from the farmers via computers or radio.

By the 1960s North American Farmers produced huge surpluses of wheat and other grains. In order to help the rural culture of the United States survive, the National Government developed a system of price supports and other payments to farmers. For the most part, these program did not achieve the goal of keeping the population in the countryside. For a time, sales of wheat to the Soviet Union buoyed the wheat regions. President Jimmy Carter's decision to halt grain sales to the USSR caused a dramatic decline the demand for American wheat. As a result, growers in other parts of the world increased grain production and fulfilled the Soviet orders. More recently, declines in the prosperity of Asian nations during the 1990s have also affected the demand for wheat. The decreased demand and good harvests around the world have made it nearly impossible for wheat farms in the United State to make a profit. As a result, the number of full time farmers in North & South Dakota, Nebraska and Kansas declined 18-20% between 1980 and 2000.

Because farmers do not rotate crops when growing wheat, diseases, weeds and insect pests are major concerns and must be controlled chemically. Wheat is especially vulnerable to a fungus called rust, which reduces production of each plant. A complete support system has been developed to help farmers control rust and other diseases. At public universities the states maintain extensive research programs of applied research in plant genetics, botany and chemistry. Private corporations provide a plethora of agriculture chemicals and in then carry on extensive research programs. In addition, state governments support extension agents that reach out to the agriculturists with a wide variety of services. The combination of public and private support produced what is called the Green Revolution in wheat growing regions outside the United States. Its impact on North American farming has been incremental. Yields have steadily increased and farmers become more productive each year. However, North American farmers must become even more productive to compete against lower-cost wheat elsewhere in the world market.

Formerly, wheat growers put aside a fraction of their harvest to be used as seed for the coming year. Today seed is bought in town and is just one of the engineered inputs of modern agriculture. New strains of wheat are developed to match specific environmental constraints and herbicides. The new seed requires fertilization and production from pests and so both insecticides and herbicides are also purchased and applied. All these purchased inputs require wheat farmers to carry large debts. Some farmers in the Red River Valley of The North spend about $225,000 each spring just to plant their crops. As might be expected, credit is an integral part of farming. The case flow on debt and production puts great pressure on individuals and families during times when prices are bad or harvests poor. In 1997, prices for a bushel of wheat reached $2.06, the same price a bushel brought in 1866. It is possible that another 20-25% of full time grain farmers will go out of business as the century comes to an end.
The monoculture wheat country has few towns of great size and the urban system established by the early railroad developers has collapsed. A line of grain elevators is all that remains of many farm service centers. The populations of the towns in the region are elderly and most observers predict a further decline of population in the land of King Wheat.

The distribution of wheat growing regions of the world corresponds well to the model of land use develop by Von Thunen. They lie between the more intensive mixed farming regions and the more extensive cattle ranching county. In the model, location is based on transportation costs, and wheat products can be shipped fairly easily. These are not the best environments for wheat production, but other more profitable crops have replaced wheat in the better watered areas closer to the markets.

Dairying

Dairying is another form of agriculture that developed from mixed crop and livestock farming. During the subsistence period nearly all farmers kept cows. They were the household's source of milk, butter, and cheese and meat. However dairy cows were not as profitable as other animals or crops. The difficulty of shipping fluid milk in the nineteenth century meant the farm surplus production had to be converted to butter and cheese or used to fatten pigs. With the advent of trains and later good highways, it became possible to profitably ship milk scores of miles to urban markets.

The growth of large urban markets created a potential demand for milk and farmers on the old margins of the corn belt began to specialize in milk production. The location of dairy farms is generally around large cities and between the prime hog-corn-soybean farms of the corn belt and the big woods. In the 1920s nearly every family in this region had a cow, but by 1990 dairying was concentrated in a much smaller region consisting of eastern Minnesota, Wisconsin and up-state New York. Cows have all but disappeared from the prime land in the central corn region of Iowa, Illinois, Indiana and Ohio. Another large population of cows lives near the metro areas of the southwest. In fact California ranks first in the total number of cows.

Apparently, there was some resistance among corn-hog farmers to the rearing of cows. However, the newer immigrants from Europe had to settle on the cheaper and unoccupied lands of New York and the Great Lake states. They brought to the Untied Stated breeds of dairy cattle from the shores of the North Sea with names liked Holstein -Frisian, Guernsey, Jersey, Ayrshire . These were joined by Brown Swiss, Red Devon and the milking Shorthorns. Each of these breeds had distinctive characteristics. Some like the Guernsey and Jersey produced a rich milk high in butter fat. Others like Holsteins produce large quantities of milk. At first farmers preferred breeds like the Devon Reds, Dutch Belted or Shorthorns that could be raised for both milk and beef. However, as the farms began to specialize, the familiar black and white Holstein-Frisian breed became dominate because it out-produced the other breeds.

Cows were comfortable grazing the poor pastures of the hills and wetlands of the poorly drained Great Lake States. Their digestive systems enabled them to live on nearly any kinds of vegetation. However, when they are feed grain in rations they are capable of producing great quantities of milk. Farmers soon learned that corn, cut green and chopped, could be stored in cylinder structures called silos where hay and corn can ferment and become silage. This enabled the farms to feed the animals over the winter.

Of all the forms of farming, dairying demands the most time. Cows must be milked at least twice a day. Thus, dairy farmers must live close to the animals. The northern European immigrants settled on small farms and established cooperative creameries to market their product. Some also maintained routes in near by cities where they delivered to the doorsteps of their customers. After World War Two, the milk routes were consolidated into large retailing companies that were able to economically meet the requirements for pasteurized milk. Eventually, the convenience stores become the primary milk sales points.

In this same period the industry began to mechanize. Milking machines, automatic barn cleaners and tank trucks greatly increased the farmers' productivity. On a modern farm, dairy cows are milked by machines. The milk is then cooled and piped into a waiting tank truck trailer. The creamery delivers a clean and empty trailer every third day and hauls away the full one. The Experiment stations and Colleges of Agriculture in the Great Lakes States lead to new ideas on feeds and disease control. Selective breeding produced cows who could produce astounding amounts of milk. Average annual milk yield from cows in 1949 was about 6,000 pounds . In 1980 it had more than doubled to 12,300 pounds. During this period the average herd size doubled to 40 head.

By the end of the century, herds reached sizes inconceivable to farmers of just a generation ago. Farms milking 1000 cows are said to be the ideal size. It was discovered that the more frequently cows are milked the more productive they become. As a result, the large dairy operations have three shifts per day and three milkings per day. Cows are housed in large structures without stalls and eat their fill of carefully balanced rations. When they are tired they lay down on special bedding materials. They all wear computer chips which help the farmers monitor their health and productivity.

The drive for even greater volumes of milk has greatly favored the large Holstein breeds over all others. However, some farms have discovered special or niche markets that prefer the richer milk of the Jerseys and Guernseys. The dual-purpose stock have essentially disappeared from working farms but still exist on few farms as special interest animals.

Like wheat growing, the dairy industry has advertised vigorously to promote their commodity. School milk programs underwritten by the federal government and direct price supports help maintain profit margins in the face of a decline in per capita fluid milk consumption. In 1960, per capita consumption was 26 gallons per year. But by 1984 it stood at 22 gallons/yr. Cheese consumption increased from 12- 18 pounds a year. Americans just love pizza.

As the average size of dairy herds continues to rise, the issues confronting farmers have changed. Cows produce milk to feed their calves. Therefore cows must give birth each year to remain fresh. Cows are impregnated artificially with seaman provided by specialized genic firms that maintain a herd of sires whose genes contain desired qualities. Farmers have always replenished their herds with the annual calf crop. However, now large operations "farm out" their calves to part-time farmers who raise the heifers until they are mature. The bull calves are sold to others where they are raised and fattened for beef. In only a few parts of the country are calves sold for veal. This system of dispersion of the young cattle reduces the major problem of large farms--manure disposal.

The mixed crop and livestock farms developed in Europe and the United States have been successful because the manure produced by animals can be spread on the fields, which replenishes the soil's fertility. However, the large concentration of animals calls for elaborate manure management practices. The barnyard manure piles that were found on every farm as late as the 1950s have disappeared. It was said that one could tell the wealth of a farmer by the size of the manure pile. Today lagoons with impervious linings receive the liquified manure from the cattle barns. As bacteria break down the organic matter, the remaining liquid is applied to the fields in a regular fashion. In some cases large dairy farmers have agreements with neighboring grain farmers to take the fertilizer.

Because of the hydrogen dioxide emissions from lagoons, the large farms are monitored by pollution control agencies and must be sure that their lagoons do not exceed ambient air quality standards. This situation produces a location problem. The farms must be close enough to towns to be able to hire the large number of shift workers needed to operate the milking parlors but not so close that the odors offend the non-farm neighbors. As more urban people move into the countryside, odor issues become contentious.


Poultry Production

In the 1930s, feed dealers in the south realized that they might be able to expand their business by providing farmers with newly hatched chicks as well as feed on credit. The farmers would be able to repay the loans when the birds were sold. Until this time, most farmers across the United States had a small barnyard flock of chickens that survived by scavenging and getting handouts from the farmer's wife, who usually had responsibility for the birds and took the profits from selling eggs in the town. The birds were harvested for meat at the end of their useful life as layers, and chicken was reserved for a Sunday dinner. Now, however, the mass production of chickens, called broilers, has so revolutionized the production of chickens that chicken is now the cheapest meat in the United States and the most commonly consumed.

Today, chickens are produced in the following way. Large agribusiness companies operate hatcheries, feed-mills and processing plants. Day-old chicks are delivered to the farmers, who are responsible for building a house and maintaining proper temperature and water for the bird. The company's employees fill the feed bins for the farmer once per week. According to the production schedule, these employees return to collect market-ready birds and take them away for processing and marketing. The farmer is paid a guaranteed price for the bird.

Over the years, selective breeding has produced a very efficient chicken. In 1940 it took about 17 pounds of feed and about 15 weeks to produce a four-pound broiler. Forty years later it took only eight pounds of feed and 7 to 8 weeks to produce the same size bird. In that same forty years the size of the poultry operations increased dramatically. In 1940, broiler houses that contained 1500 birds were considered to be large. But now contemporary broiler houses hold 20,000 birds or more. In addition, mechanization of water and feeding operation has reduced labor requirements from about 250 hours per thousand birds in 1940 to fewer that 25 hours. Broiler production is an attractive option for small farmers because it requires a few hours of non-strenuous labor each day, and then they are able work another job off of the farm.

Broiler production is highly concentrated in intensely specialized areas that are widely scattered in the southeastern portion of the United States. The modern broiler industry developed on the eastern seaboard before World War II. It then grew rapidly in northeastern Georgia and northwestern Arkansas immediately after the War. Subsequently, concentrations developed in central Mississippi, northeastern and northwestern Georgia and the Piedmont areas of North Carolina and the Shannendoa Valley area of Virginia.
Many people believe that the broiler production process is really manufacturing rather than farming because it is not directly connected to the land. The area that produces large numbers of chickens are districts which have a feed deficit. The feed consumed by the birds has to be shipped in from the Midwest. The long, low one- story broiler houses are essentially factories that use birds as machines to convert raw materials of corn and soybeans into a finished product--meat for human consumption.

Chickens are also efficient producers of manure, and one of the major issues of broiler production has been the disposal of the manure. While ideally it should be returned to the land because it is excellent fertilizer, manure is frequently feed back to the animals. The manure is rich in protein and after it has been dried and flavored with molasses it looks like soy bean meal and can be fed to either chickens or cattle.

Pork Production

Another major change in the traditional mixed livestock and crop farming of North America has been the change in the production of pork. The last decade has seen a dramatic change in the distribution of hogs. In addition to Northern Iowa and Southern Minnesota, pork production occurs in intense concentrations widely scattered in an area that is on the fringe of the most productive region in North America. One center is in North Carolina, the other in Texas and Oklahoma. In 1997, one county alone in Oklahoma produced 2 million hogs. It was the center of an area that produced 4 million hogs, or four percent of the national total, and one-seventh of what the whole state of Iowa produced.

These hog farms are significantly different than the traditional farms of the Midwest. They look more like chicken or turkey ranches than traditional farms. Each farm has long, low metal buildings in rows on dry ground and they tend to be located in the corners of large fields. The larger area of the field is under a center- pivot irrigation system that creates a large circle of crop land. The corners not reached by irrigation have been converted to sites for hog barns. The hog manure is flushed from these houses into a lagoon where the solids settle, the liquid evaporates and bacteria breakdown the fecal material. At appropriate times the liquid in the lagoon is pumped through the center-pivot irrigation system and put back on the land. A hog produces about four times the manure as an adult human, so waste disposal issues are significant.

These farmers work on contracts and are receiving 14-day old piglets, weighing about a dozen pounds, from large agribusinesses. The piglets are then held on the farms in various pens until they reach about 275 pounds and are approximately 6 months old. They then go off to a processing plant. The scale of these operations is enormous. Farmers contract with processors to deliver between 300,000 and 500,000 hogs per year.

Pork production is vertically integrated. Processors have built slaughterhouses in these production regions that can handle around one thousand hogs per hour. Therefore, without stretching the system, about 2 million hogs a year can be produced. Corporations such as Seaboard Corporation Inc. dominate the pork production region in Oklahoma. Seaboard is a diversified international food producing company which has operations throughout the world raising shrimp and fish and marketing various kinds of grain. The Oklahoma Panhandle is able to engage in this intensive hog production because of the large amount of groundwater they take from the Ogallala Aquifer. Irrigation water is inexpensive and the natural gas used to pump it is also cheap. The local farmers are able to produce good crops of feed grain such as corn and sorghum to use as part of the ration for the hogs.

According to U.S. government figures, in 1997 the highest ranking counties in terms of the value of hogs and pigs sold was Samson County in North Carolina with $511,000, Upland North Carolina with $510,000, Texas County, Oklahoma with $199,000, Vladen with $183,000, and Souix County, Iowa with $172,000. individual counties aside, most of the concentration of pork is still within the traditional corn belt with Iowa ranked number one in 1997, Minnesota three, Illinois four and Missouri five, Indiana six. However, Oklahoma rose from the twenty-fifth ranking state to the ninth ranking state and Illinois dropped from the second rank to the fourth ranked. If we look at numbers of animals, in 1997 there were 61 million hogs in the United States. Of that 61 million, 58 million were in 20 states and 14 million were in Iowa, 9 million in North Carolina, 5 million in Minnesota, 4 million in Illinois, and 3 million in Indiana. Oklahoma went from having 260,000 in 1992 to 1,689,000 going from the 24th to the 9th ranking state in the number of hogs. It is even more spectacular when we look at Texas County. Oklahoma which had 13,000 hogs in 1992 and 19,000 in 1997.

In response to these large-scale pork palaces in North Carolina and in Oklahoma, traditional pork producers in the corn belt have had to change their ways of production. Gone are the days of small hog feedlots on farms that were engaged in a variety of crop production activities. Today the Midwest is also changing itself into a pork factory operation with contracting. In the Midwest, companies like Hormel Foods, Cargill Inc., and Land 'O Lakes, a farmer cooperative, participate in pork production in all forms. These companies have pig breeding farms, they supply the young pigs to the farmers and then provide feed as well as veterinarian service. They then guarantee the farmer a price for the pork if the farmers are raising the hogs according to the instructions of the company. This enables the farmers to have access to the most highly developed breeds of hogs and market their hogs without worrying about fluctuations in the price of pork. In turn, this enables the corporations to have a ready market for their grain. A typical family operated farm in Minnesota would have about 4,000 pigs on the farm at any given time.

The biotechnologic revolution has begun to impact pork production but the future applications are even more amazing. For example, in 1999 researchers at Baylor University reported their research had developed a way to stimulate the pig's pituitary gland with a synthetic chemical which is inserted into a biodegradable piece of DNA. The material is injected into a the leg of a two week old piglet. The injected pigs grow rapidly in response to the active gland. The treated pigs are ready for slaughter two weeks early, they eat 35% less feed and produce less manure. All these features will dramatically lower the cost of the finished meat. This treatment, like all other biotechnologic practices must be approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration before they can be adopted by farmers.

Changes in Grain

The mixed crop and livestock core region has also undergone significant changes in its spatial organization and the distribution of concentrated areas of special types of agriculture. Like the marginal variations of grain and dairy farming, grain production has become increasing mechanized, industrialized and specialized. The development of hybrid seeds in the 1930s was a major break with traditional planting techniques. The hybrids developed by companies like Pioneer, DeKalb, Cargill and others guaranteed farmers increased yield, and standardized ear size and height of corn. In addition, breeds of corn that could ripen faster were promulgated. The seeds were so good that the hybrid corn was grown through out the Eastern United States by 1948, a decade after it was first adopted in eastern Iowa and western Illinois. Had World War II not intervened, the diffusion may have taken even less time.

The new seeds required high quality fertilizer to be successful, and herbicides and pesticides to insure maximum yield per acre. Genetic engineers have produced strains of seeds that are resistant to damage by herbicides and expect to make corn that will actually fix nitrogen in the soil. The seeds produced during the war are patented and the knowledge of their design is the intellectual property of the companies that produce it. Farmers can not hold back a portion of a harvest to re-plant the next year.

Store-bought seed is only one of the changes. Draft horses disappeared from all but a few hobby farms by the late 1950s. Their place has been taken by the tractors and self-propelled machines of ever increasing size. The powerful new machines pull plows that cut sixteen furrows at a pass. Self-propelled combines, with air conditioned cabs and seats designed to be occupied 8-12 hours per day, cut the stalks, shell the grain from the head, and return the vegetable materials to the field to control erosion. These expensive machines have been complimented by geographic information systems. Detail maps of soil quality in individual fields are connected to global positioning systems in the machine. This enables the farmer to vary the amounts of fertilizer and other chemicals to match environmental conditions for every three meter square area. This not only increases the productivity of soil, but it eliminates over-application of chemicals. One leading corporate agronomist boasts that with today's farming practices and existing genetic knowledge a variety of super corn could be developed. If this super corn were to be planted, the state of Iowa could grow a crop equal to the entire 1998 corn harvest of the United States. He was quick to point out that such a seed, if available, would mean thousands of farms with less fertile soil would be driven out of business and vast acreage would be idle. Nonetheless, recent technological advances provide vast possibilities for the future of crop farming.

The basic crop rotation in the Untied State corn belt also changed during the last half of the twentieth century. Soybeans were introduced as a secondary crop after George Washington Carver discovered that the bean broke down into a rich source of oil and protien. By 1940, 5 million acres yielded 78 million bushels of beans and the United States became a net exporter of soybeans. Production leapt ahead, and by the early 1950s the United States overtook China as the world's leading producer. The soy meal is a very efficient food for animals, and the oil is the most common edible oil in the world. The market seems to have great potential for growth, as new products seem to be continually appearing.

By the 1960s, farmers realized they could improve their income and quality of life by focusing time and energy on crops alone, and so the farming industry shifted away from traditional rotation. Corn was still the primary crop, but soybeans were substituted for the small grain and hay crops. The new combination enabled farmers to shift away from feeding their corn to hogs or cattle. This was possible because the beans fix nitrogen and could be substituted for both the hay and the small grain crop. Furthermore, they were easy to grow. Farmers could use the same machines for planting and harvesting both corn and beans, and the crops are planted and harvested at different times. Although beans are primarily used for animal feed and oil, producers are developing additional markets. For example, 30% of United States newspapers use soy ink, and soybean oil is considered a viable alternative to petroleum-based diesel fuel.


Alaska's Matanuska Valley: The Northern-Most Crop and Livestock Farming


The last great trek by farm families in the United States occurred in 1935. About one thousand people from the relief roles in Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin traveled to the Matanuska Valley in Alaska to begin an agricultural colony sponsored by the Alaska Rural Rehabilitation Corporation. ARPC is a non-profit corporation that was established and originally directed by the Department of the Interior and the Federal Emergency Relief Administration. The Matanuska Valley, about 40 miles from Anchorage, was homesteaded by a 400 settlers between 1914 and 1916 but only 76 remained on the land when the colonists arrived. Although the summers were short, the long hours of daylight enabled hay and vegetables to flourish. In fact, the valley was soon famous for gigantic vegetables, such as the 61-pound cabbage harvested in 1957.

The pioneers that came to Alaska were the result of a colonization plan promulgated in 1927 by the leaders of the Alaska Railroad. The railroaders wanted to create a market in the valley. The U.S. government became interested in the plan because there was an agreement with Canada, Japan and the Soviet Union that military bases would not be established in the Territory if there was prior agricultural settlement. So, at the height of the New Deal, this a place was created. It involved selecting young couples who were accustomed to farm work and were on the Relief Roles, and giving them a chance for free land, animals and equipment if they would relocate to Alaska. The first train of new homesteaders left St. Paul with great fanfare in April, 1935. The group was given a huge reception in San Francisco and a rousing send off when their ship left for Alaska on May first. A week later, the group moved into a tent camp in Palmer, Alaska. Later that month the families drew lots for 40 acre parcels. The size of the land grants is significant. The valley is not large and the farmers were expected to engage in intensive agriculture producing crops for the Anchorage market.

Using heavy equipment and working cooperatively, the settlers cleared their land and began to grow garden crops. Later, using animals allocated by the Corporations, they began to produce fresh milk and eggs, which were marketed through their Coop. Vegetables and hay were the primary crops. The settlers built scaled-down versions of Midwestern barns and established a lifestyle that resembled the dairy and mixed farming/forestry operations of the Great Lakes forest region. Life in the colony was not attractive to all the pioneers, however, and by 1941 fifty percent of the original settlers left the valley.

Those who remained organized life around the Cooperative movement they knew from the Midwest, and their farms provided a steady flow of food for the nearby markets. They became famous for large vegetables. In 1957, a prize was awarded to a farmer who grew a head of cabbage that weighed 61 lbs. However, the colony could not compete with the jobs provided in Alaska's other industries. While a few dairies are in operation, the musk oxen farm is most prominent in the valley. The towns of the colonists are still flourishing and the memory of the colonists is a key part of the local culture. But agriculture has not proven to be a major component of the state's economy. In 1992 there were about 250 farms in the state and the number has been declining constantly. Less than half of the farms have an annual sales of more than $10,000 per year. Most of current farm production is nursery and greenhouse crops.


California and the Pacific Northwest

The third root of American agriculture is known as Mediterranean agriculture, which originated on the shores of that sea. The Mediterranean crop and animal combination predominates in California, where it is extremely productive. Agriculturists in California have added to the classic Mediterranean patterns the modified farming practices from the Midwest, such as dairying and livestock feeding. But the basic structure can be considered Mediterranean.

The areas around the world in which Mediterranean agriculture is found share a similar physical environment. They all border a sea and are found on coasts where prevailing sea winds provide moisture and moderate the winter temperatures. Summers are hot and dry, but the sea breezes moderate the extreme temperatures. In most areas, the land is hilly or mountainous with steep slopes which occasionally plunge into the sea or leave a small coastal plain. The rivers are short (with the exception of the Nile!), but water is contained in erosion features called alluvial fans that form at the feet of mountains. Ground water stored in the fans can be reached by wells and will provide a steady supply of irrigation water.

In this system, little farm income is earned from animal rearing. Livestock do not flourish because there is limited surface water and poor grazing. In former times, transhumance was common. Sheep and goats were moved from their winter quarters along the coast to higher pastures in the hot, dry summers. At higher elevations the animals could find enough food to support themselves. With the onset of winter, the flocks would return to the lowland and the surplus animals that cold not be wintered were slaughtered.

Crops in the Mediterranean complex are used primarily for human consumption. This sort of agriculture is frequently called horticulture, the term used to refer to the growing of fruit, vegetables and flowers. This term is not completly appropriate because Mediterranean agriculture also includes the growing of grains, especially wheat. Nonetheless, most of the world's grapes, vegetables, nuts, olives and flowers are grown in the zones of Mediterranean agriculture.

On the European and North African Coasts of the Mediterranean Sea, olives and grapes are the most important cash crops. Two thirds of the world's wine crop is produced in this area. Italy, France and Spain are the leading producers, but Algeria is also extremely important. The other areas of Mediterranean agriculture--South Africa, Chile, Australia and especially California--produce most of the remaining one third. The growing of wine grapes is greatly influenced by culture. Islamic farmers produce no wine even though their neighbors lead the world in production. Likewise, immigrants from Italy established the viticulture of California. Their names--Mondovi, Rossi--are synonymous with Californian wines. Grapes are typically grown on hillsides to take advantage of exposure to the sun and other micro-climatic effects. Although grapes are very sensitive to micro-environmental a conditions to the point where wine have tastes specific to particular vineyards, they do not demand especially fertile soil. Thus, the thin soils on hillsides can be quite productive. Although olive groves are dominate features of the Mediterranean agricultural regions, they have been replaced in California with more valuable fruit and nut orchards.

California's agriculture also differs from the classic Mediterranean type in the amount of grain grown. About half the total arable land enclosing the Mediterranean Sea is planted with wheat, which is primarily used for making pasta and bread. There, the wheat is planted in the fall and harvested the next summer. Much of the wheat land is left fallow for a year or two to recharge the soil moisture. The version of Mediterranean agriculture that dominates California's Central Valley, the southern most basins, and the coastal valleys is more intensive. More land is irrigated, less wheat is grown and more land is devoted the production of fruit and vegetables. In fact, California produces most of the nuts, citrus fruits and other fruit consumed in the United states. These crops demand great numbers of seasonal workers, and so migrant labor is an important part of the State's culture. Over the past decades, farmers have continually invested in mechanization to reduce the number of laborers employed. Nonetheless, in the prime agricultural counties over 90% of the farms use seasonal labor.

The enormous amount of agricultural production in California was made possible by the development of transcontinental railroads and refrigerated truck. As the transportation system improved, California production and marketing corporations were able to tap into huge winter markets for fresh fruits, vegetables and fruit juice concentrates. In addition, corporations like Del Monte established large canneries to receive the valley's produce and ship it to even more distant markets. The cost of national marketing and distribution systems made it difficult for small operations to succeed. As a result, the vast majority of Californian farms are operated by partnerships or corporations.

Farming in California is complicated by the rapidly expanding urban areas. Suburban and ex-urban developments put pressure on farmers in all the agricultural counties. The pressure is especially strong in the most attractive areas. Landowners in the wine growing region of the Napa and Sonoma Valleys are facing great pressure to develop their fields and hillsides for housing. In order to find enough land, many farmers have expanded into arid regions and therefore must irrigate intensively. Cheap water and power have enabled this expansion. But as the urban population grows, water for agriculture will become more expensive. But for the foreseeable future, California will be a dominate state in American agriculture.

California's competition in the market for horticultural crops is found in the Rio Grand valley, the high oases of Colorado and the Southeastern Seaboard, especially Florida. Like California, agriculture in Florida is a corporate affair. The southeast area of commercial gardening and fruit farming provides food for the large markets on the east coast. It is based on mixed farming practices, spun off from he large poultry and pork operations. The farmers use migrant labor but are also mechanizing as fast as they can in order to reduce costs. Although some of these crops are sold fresh in nearby cities, most are either canned or frozen. The affluent East Coast population has created an ever-increasing demand for higher priced speciality crops, which these farms are happy to sell. Some small dairy farmers are shifting to speciality crops as the profits from milk decline. Their smaller farms close to the cities are ideal locations for this type of agriculture.

Hawaiian agriculture is also dominated by corporate farms. The American colonial families established pineapple plantations and ranches on the island and nearly swept away the indigenous Hawaiian agriculture pattern. Plantation is a form of agriculture that is typically found in the tropics and subtropics. It is characterized by marked ethnic contrasts between the workers and the owners or managers of the operation. Plantations produce crops for distant markets and must commonly import food for the work force. They are large scale operations that are usually devoted to one or two crops. In Hawaii, those crops were sugar and pineapple. As is the case with most plantations, the managers of the Hawaii apparitions imported laborers because the local population was to small to provide enough cheep labor. The great distance between Hawaii and its markets meant that products had to be processed on the islands. As the labor demands of the plantations decreased, immigrant workers moved into to other forms of subsistence and commercial agriculture. Two types have become important; coffee and fresh flowers or green plants. Kona coffee is the only kind grown in the United States. It is grown in a very small region on tiny farms. The availability of frequent flights to the Mainland and Japan enables florists to ship exotic tropical blooms and green plants to eager consumers.


The Future of Farming in the United States.

Each year the number of farms in the United States decreases. The prices for grain and livestock fluctuate according to environmental conditions, which affect production. This changes economic conditions around the world, thus affecting demand. Farm crises characterized both the decades of the eighties and nineties in the United States. Prices fell and caused a decline in land values. Farmers who had borrowed heavily to expand their operations and cover operational deficient were forced out of farming when their equity declined and their cash flow could not justify further borrowing. The situation in the 1990s was complicated by a dramatic decline in the world price for grain, as well as wet weather which delayed or prevented planting. Ten percent of Minnesota's farmers went out of business in 1999. Of those that stayed, most took second jobs.

The industrialization and globalization of agriculture in North America has raised difficult cultural and political issues. For many in the agricultural regions, farming is more than a business. It is a way of life that is quintessentially American. Yeomen farmers living on their land are the Jefferson ideal. These households are stewards of the land, the fundamental base of the United States. As families who have farmed the same land for over a century sell out, questions are raised about the future of rural North America that demand answers.