American Agriculture History Minute: Becoming Stewards of the Soil

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

We like to think that early American farmers and ranchers were good stewards of the soil, like farmers and ranchers are today, but history shows they were not. From the 1770s to the 1830s, pioneers moved into new lands that stretched from Kentucky to Alabama to Texas.

Most were farmers who moved in family groups, but historians show how wasteful that first generation of pioneers were.

They did not cultivate the land properly, and when the natural fertility of the virgin land was used up, they simply sold out and moved further west to repeat the process.

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