I’m Mark Oppold with an American Agriculture History Minute.
Historian Lewis Hacker shows how wasteful, actually, early settlers were. From the 1770s to the 1830s, pioneers moved into new lands that stretched from what is now Kentucky to Alabama to Texas.
Most were farmers, some were ranchers, but most families. He shows how wasteful the first generation of pioneers were. He says they didn’t know a lot about cultivating the land properly, and when the natural fertility of the virgin land was used up, they simply sold out, moved west and did it all over again.
That’s today’s American Agriculture History Minute. I’m Mark Oppold. Thanks for reading. I’ll see you next time.
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