Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been categorized as “American Agriculture History Minute”
I’m Mark Oppold with an American Agriculture History Minute. Greeley became Colorado’s first major agricultural settlement and they soon discovered there that irrigation was going to be the key to what was called the Great American Desert at that time. And by 1900, Colorado indeed led the nation in the acreage of irrigated farmland. But ever larger federal reclamation projects …
I’m Mark Oppold with an American Agriculture History Minute. At the close of the Civil War, the government offered homesteads in Kansas to Union Army veterans and more than 100,000 took advantage. Most were strong young veterans who had left their families to fight for the Union and became really the first real pioneer farmers in Kansas. The majority had …
I’m Mark Oppold with an American Agriculture History Minute. In 1938, Charles E. Schmidt began a mail order tractor parts business. The company got its start in Minot, North Dakota in 1938 as a mail order supplier of tractor parts, the first retail store founded in 1939. We know it today as Tractor Supply Company. And, in January of 1959, …
I’m Mark Oppold with an American Agriculture History Minute. Early agriculture in the state of Kansas was not always successful. Settlers began increasing in numbers when Kansas was opened to settlement in 1854. Many settlers brought seeds from the east or from their homeland. They planted mostly corn, but experimented with crops like oats, cotton, even tobacco. Most did not …
I’m Mark Oppold with an American Agriculture History Minute. Early agriculture in what is now the state of Kansas was not easy. The government sent a young frontiersman to help. His name? Daniel Morgan Boone, indeed the son of the famous frontiersman from Kentucky. Now Boone worked primarily in what is now Northeast Kansas, present day Jefferson County. His work …
I’m Mark Oppold with an American Agriculture History Minute. Edward P. Allis was an entrepreneur who in 1860 bought a bankrupt firm at a sheriff’s auction, the Reliance Works of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, under his leadership, began producing steam engines and other mill equipment. Thomas Chalmers was a Scottish immigrant to America, came to the U.S. about 1842, and was working …
I’m Mark Oppold with an American Agriculture History Minute. In New York State, the fur pelt export trade to Europe flourished in the early 1700s and added additional wealth to that region. After 1720, mid-Atlantic farming was stimulated by the international demand for wheat. A massive population explosion in Europe drove wheat prices up. By 1770, a bushel of wheat …
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. …
I’m Mark Oppold with an American Agriculture History Minute. Early settlers discovered that the Great Plains were not all that great. They found very harsh climate with tornadoes, blizzards, drought, hailstorms, floods and grasshoppers. It made for high risks and ruined many crops and many settlers that became financially ruined and either protested through the populist movement or went back …
I’m Mark Oppold with an American Agriculture History Minute. The federal government issued 160-acre tracts to about 400,000 families who settled a new land under the Homestead Act 1862. Even larger numbers purchased lands at very low cost as new railroads tried to create new markets. The railroads advertised heavily in Europe and brought over hundreds of thousands of farmers …
