development of agriclture?

Question

What are some changes that have occured from the first development of agriclture to the specialized forms we today.

for example: today- we use tractore to help us

Answer 1

Intensification of farming by growing crops with higher yields.

crop rotation such as using a legume in the rotatioin to add nitrogen to the soils for better growing conditions.

planting shelter belts to act as a wind break to reduce soil erosion

zero til policy so that soil does not erode away.


Hope this helps

Answer 2

Colonial Agriculture

The first European farmers drew on indigenous wisdom in order to survive. Prepared for gold-searching rather than subsistence farming, early residents of Jamestown, Virginia, relied on local Indian knowledge of planting to circumvent starvation. Settlers learned how to cultivate corn and tobacco. The pilgrims of the fledgling Plymouth Colony similarly discovered the wonders of maize. As the Massachusetts Bay Colony expanded, pioneers introduced cows, horses, and sheep to the eastern landscape. With few sheds and little fencing, livestock initially ran wild. Most early colonists were city gentry, religious dissenters, or indentured servants—all with little experience of farming. Tools proved basic, with the hoe, axe, and scythe the most common implements. Those who were fortunate enough to own plows made money by working the fields of their neighbors. Fresh immigrants sought out Indian clearings for crop cultivation rather than expend significant time on tree felling and heavy brush clearance. While a few regions, such as the Connecticut River valley and the Hudson River area, proved ideal for agriculture, thin and rocky soil compromised crop productivity on the eastern seaboard. Most farmers migrated to fresh terrain when soils became depleted rather than develop sustainable agricultural systems. The sheer abundance of land lent itself to this practice, with more territory always available for cultivation. The taking of Indian land occasionally provoked violent confrontation. In 1676, tormented by Indian attacks and crop failures, Nathaniel Bacon led a vigilante group of servants and small farmers to exact revenge on local Native American communities. Governor William Berkeley, who challenged the rebellion, was placed under house arrest.

Easily grown and requiring no machinery to process, corn served as the staple food crop in the fledgling colonial economy. Meanwhile, tobacco emerged as a key trade commodity. The first English tobacco was grown in Virginia in 1613. A smoking craze in western Europe encouraged colonists to continually increase their production of tobacco for export. Virginia farmers so focused on the weed that colonial governors issued regulations warning residents to plant some food crops for subsistence. In 1628, production surpassed 550,000 pounds. In the absence of harvesting machinery, tobacco, along with other crops, depended on ample manual labor. At first, indentured servants filled the niche in the fast-expanding tobacco fields of Virginia and Maryland, as well as in the rice fields of South Carolina. However, servitude gave way to slavery. By 1700, southern agriculture was already dependent on a slave economy.

During the 1700s, established New England agriculturalists experimented with more specialized forms of production. Animal husbandry developed in response to needs for draft horses to pull wagons and quality meat for town dwellers. German American farmers bred the much-lauded Conestoga breed of draft horse. By furnishing all manner of grains for consumption in the fast-expanding cities of the Atlantic seaboard, as well as for export abroad, New Jersey and Pennsylvania farmers earned their colonies the reputation of breadbasket kingdoms. Meanwhile, in the South, plantation owners reaped successive financial harvests from a single-crop economy based on exploitative labor. In 1708, tobacco exports reached 30 million pounds. On the eve of the American Revolution, the figure surpassed 100 million.

Farming in the New Republic

During the American Revolution, agriculture proved essential in keeping both armies fighting. Farmers responded to war by increasing their production of cattle, fruit, and crops. A female labor force filled roles previously occupied by men. Shortages usually came about as a result of troop movements and transportation problems rather than agricultural shortfalls. Both sides drew on the lofty image of owning one's own farm to recruit men for war duties, offering acres of land to those who volunteered.

The victorious United States was, first and foremost, an agricultural nation. Having procured a farm in New York, French commentator J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, writing immediately after the Revolution, explained how "this formerly rude soil has been converted by my father into a pleasant farm, and in return, it has established all our rights; on it is founded our rank, our freedom, our power as citizens, our importance as inhabitants of such a district" (Letters from an American Farmer [1782]). In Notes on the State of Virginia (1787), Thomas Jefferson expounded his idea of a virtuous agrarian nation by claiming that "those who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God." Agriculture united men of differing classes and persuasions, appealing to both the rugged frontiersman and the dignified gentleman—the latter finding outlet in the Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture (1785) and the South Carolina Society for Promoting and Improving Agriculture and Other Rural Concerns (1785). Farming was a way of life. The 1810 census recorded a total population of 7.2 million Americans, 90 percent of whom lived on farms.

Successive land acts—most notably the Land Survey Ordinance of 1785 and the Land Act of 1796—set in motion the transfer of the public domain to private hands. Land was survey ed, parceled into townships, and auctioned. However, a minimum purchase of 640 acres, at first priced at one dollar, then increased to two, proved beyond the reach of the average farmer. Land speculators benefited most from the distribution system, while squatting on unclaimed tracts became popular with poorer farmers. Geometric parcels, the infamous grid system, hardly abided by landscape topography or suited river access. When sales proved disappointing, the government instituted credit reforms and reduced the minimum acreage to 160 acres.

Farming expanded west of the Appalachians during the late 1700s. The Ohio River valley, with its rich soil and timber resources, invited settlement. However, frontier farming proved far from easy. Migrant families arrived at their wilderness purchase with few animals, tools, or financial resources. Densely forested land required extensive clearing. Agricultural technology remained primitive, with the time-honored plough, the sickle, the hoe, and the axe physically testing the endurance and the resolve of the agrarian pioneer. The transporting of goods was limited by dirt roads and changeable weather conditions. When it rained, roadways disappeared beneath mud and surface water. Farmers set their sights on quick improvements to properties before selling out to purchase a larger acreage. Successful frontier farming depended on good soil and a dedicated family. From an early age, children contributed to the home economy from milking to harvesting. Country stores proved important suppliers of all manner of items from tea and coffee to gunpowder and pottery.

Having exhausted soils in Georgia and the Carolinas, southern plantation owners joined small-scale farmers in moving into Alabama, Mississippi, and western Georgia in the early 1800s. The wealthiest plantation holders purchased vast swathes of land; poorer farmers were often left with marginal plots. Cotton became a staple crop of the South with the invention of the mechanized cotton gin by Eli Whitney in 1793. The machine separated valuable cotton fiber from unwanted seed. In 1811, output of cotton in the South exceeded 80 million pounds.

The antebellum period was marked by new technologies, increasing commercialization and specialization, geographical expansion, and transportation innovation. Much-improved transport routes aided New England farmers. The opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 allowed grain to be moved at far cheaper cost. While initially charging twenty-two dollars per ton for travel, by 1835 the cost of canal transport had dropped to just four dollars. The Cumberland or National Road, starting at Cumberland, Maryland, reached Vandalia, Illinois, in 1841. Westerly migration continued unabated, with the farming frontier extending to Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa in the north and Texas in the south. Pioneers took to raising cattle for beef in Ohio and parts of Kentucky. As industrializing cities attracted many rural migrants, northern farmers welcomed developments in labor-saving agricultural machinery. John Deere engineered the steel moldboard plow in 1837 (dubbed the "singing plow" for the whining noise it produced when cutting), a tool much valued on the midwestern prairie with its rough sod. Agricultural societies and fairs proliferated. Nonetheless, farming endeavors in the United States were divided according to two types of agricultural system: small-scale farming in the North and the plantation in the South.

Postbellum Agriculture in the South and the North

The testing climate of the Civil War highlighted inadequacies in southern agriculture. Not only was farmland wrecked by conflict and slash-and-burn techniques, but structural deficiencies came to the fore. Transport systems were shown to be deficient and southern agriculture lacked a diversity of products. White planters suddenly found themselves without a labor force. The reconstruction of southern agriculture proved difficult. Freed slaves relished the idea of having their own farm, a project taken up by the government under the auspices of the Southern Homestead Act (1866). However, available public land was generally of poor quality, while freedmen lacked the money necessary for forest clearance, housing, and planting. Only four thousand claimants applied for plots under the act and the measure was repealed ten years later. Systems of tenancy gradually emerged in the postbellum South. Sharecropping involved the lease of typically twenty to forty acres (along with tools and housing) by a landowner to a working family. In return, the family forfeited a proportion (usually half) of its crop. Merchants and landowners loaned cash or supplies to sharecroppers who had little money to pay for basic living expenses. In practice, revenue from the harvest frequently failed to cover repayments, and many sharecroppers found themselves with spiraling debts. White landowners grew to exercise levels of control similar to the pre–Civil War era. Cotton production dominated the southern landscape, aided by high prices (rising to forty-three cents a pound) in the late 1860s. Even when prices dropped to ten cents a pound in the mid-1870s, output continued to rise. By 1890, production had reached 8 million bales a year.

In the North, increased markets and the absence of significant wartime disruption allowed farmers to repay debts and improve their landholdings. Land prices soared, rising in Iowa from twelve dollars an acre in 1860 to twenty-five dollars ten years later. Agriculture became more mechanized, with new plows and reapers taking advantage of farm horses. Regional specialization proceeded apace as farmers were forced to become more competitive and efficient. Facing foreign and domestic competition, many sheep raisers abandoned marginal lands to take up jobs in the swelling cities. Dairying and fruit growing became increasingly popular in New England, aided by high prices, urban demand, and innovations in refrigeration technology.

The government maintained a keen interest in the agricultural sector during this period. After lobbying from the U.S. Agricultural Society (1852), Congress established the Department of Agriculture in 1862 (raised to cabinet level in 1889). Isaac Newton, who had previously served the agricultural division of the Patent Office, assumed the mantle of first commissioner. During the same year, the Land-Grant College Act (or MORRILL ACT) allotted public land to individual states for the purpose of establishing agricultural colleges. Federal and state agencies became involved in information gathering, regulation, and scientific research. In 1884, the Bureau of Animal Industry was established to curb imports of diseased animals and to work towards the eradication of Texas fever, a cattle affliction spread by ticks. The HATCH ACT of 1887 offered federal support to agricultural experiment stations linked to land grant colleges. (The first station had been established in 1875 at Wesley an University in Middletown, Connecticut.) Scientists studied insect disease, dairy production techniques, and plant breeding and hybridization. The late 1800s also saw the strengthening of farmers associations, who sought to influence state and federal policy in matters of animal health as well as price subsidies and credit payments. Formed in 1867, the National Grange of the Patrons of Husbandry explored cooperative ventures, demanded lower railroad tariffs and banking rates, and lobbied for gender equality. The Farmers' Alliance exerted an influence over federal agricultural policies in the 1880s, but it was largely subsumed under the People's Party's 1892 platform of economic intervention, nationalization of railroads, and agricultural assistance. After a lackluster performance in the 1896 election, the populist movement dissipated, though farmers' associations continued to draw support. In 1902, Texan Isaac Newton Gresham established the Farmer's Educational and Cooperative Union. Later known as the National Farmers' Union, the organization gained popularity on the Great Plains and in the Midwest.