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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. During the Civil War, wheat prices were higher. Many producers planted more wheat. With the end of the war, the bottom dropped out of wheat prices, and in older fields, wheat yields grew poor. Pests like grasshoppers, cinch bugs attacked the wheat, destroying whole crops in some cases. For many producers, …
I’m Mark Oppold with an American Agriculture History Minute. As settlers moved west across the Mississippi River, great expansion continued. Early farmers planted crops that supplied their families and livestock with food. They kept a few chickens a hog or two, a cow, maybe some sheep. They cleared more land each year, grew bigger crops. Extra wheat, corn, oats, or …
I’m Mark Oppold with an American Agriculture History Minute. By the 1850s, the migration to the Midwest had become a great wave. Families camped at the Mississippi River, waiting their turn for ferry boats to the other side, Iowa and beyond. In only a few years, these settlers would turn forests and prairies into plowed fields. Iowa is located where …
I’m Mark Oppold with an American Agriculture History Minute. In 1873, Fred Hatch, a farmer from Illinois, built what is believed to be America’s first variation of the modern silo, trying to figure out how to store grain on his farm, also combating spoilage and rodent damage. Early rounded silos, like hatches, were made of brick or wood using cement, …
I’m Mark Oppel with an American Agriculture History Minute. As grain production grew in the mid -1800s, it became evident farmers could not use all the crops they grew and didn’t want to be forced to sell for a lack of storage. Such was the case for an Iowa farmer in 1865. He bought a grain flat house in Conover, …
I’m Mark Oppold with an American Agriculture History Minute. The first FFA national convention was held in Kansas City in 1928. Kansas City would, by the way, host the FFA convention for the next 70 years. In 1933, a group of FFA members from Fredericktown, Ohio, arrived at the convention wearing crisp blue corduroy jackets with the FFA emblem on …
I’m Mark Opel with an American Agriculture History Minute. As American agriculture expanded, farmers continued to make improvements in their production of grain, and by the late 1880s, 1890s, attention focused on improving animal production and meat quality. Enter William Danforth, who in 1894 established an animal feed company, Purina Mills. Danforth later partnered with Webster Edderley, founder of a …
I’m Mark Oppold with an American Agriculture History Minute. The U.S. economy was still primarily agriculturally based in the early 19th century. Westward expansion continues, including the Louisiana Purchase, plus the building of canals, the introduction of steamboats, opening new areas for agriculture. Still, most farming was designed to produce food for the family and maybe service small local markets. …
I’m Mark Oppold with an American Agriculture History Minute. George Washington had a complicated relationship with slavery during his lifetime. He controlled a cumulative total of over 577 slaves forced to work on his farms and including his house in Philadelphia. As president, though, he signed laws by Congress that both curtailed slavery but also protected it. But his will …
I’m Mark Oppold with an American Agriculture History Minute. Before 1720, most colonists in the mid-Atlantic region worked in small-scale farming operations and they paid for imported manufacturing goods by supplying the West Indies with corn and flour. In New York, a fur-pelt export trade to Europe flourished and added additional wealth to that region. After 1720, mid-Atlantic farming was …
