American Agriculture

American Agriculture History Minute: How Crops Migrated West

Dan American Agriculture History Minute, Field Crops, This Land of Ours

American Agriculture
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I’m Mark Oppold with an American Agriculture History Minute.

In the 1850s, there was a great push, migration to the west, finally crossing the Mississippi River and settling in Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, and Nebraska. Farmers arriving from many different regions of the U .S. brought their special agricultural ideas with them.

Those producers who had settled in New England and New York carried seeds for plum, apple, and pear trees, and more orchards were planted. Kentuckians brought their knowledge of improved seed and livestock breeding. And from Pennsylvania and Ohio, fine flocks of sheep came to graze in the dry pastures of southern Iowa, Nebraska, and Kansas.

That’s today’s American Agriculture History Minute. I’m Mark Oppold. Thanks for reading. I’ll see you next time.