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Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been categorized as “Features”
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 …
I’m Mark Oppold with an American Agriculture History Minute. Ethnicity made a difference in early American agriculture. German immigrants brought different practices and traditions to the New World than English, Scottish, or Irish farmers, for example. Each simply carried forward practices from their homeland, but with a lot more land to work with and fertile soil. German farmers, for example, …
I’m Mark Oppold with an American Agriculture History Minute. Ethnic groups played an important part in early American agriculture. German immigrants brought different practices and traditions than English, Scottish, or Irish farmers, for example. But many immigrants began their careers in agriculture as wage laborers. Merchants and artisans hired teenaged workers paying their transportation from Europe and putting them to …
I’m Mark Oppold with an American Agriculture History Minute. Jessie Shambaugh is part of American Agriculture History. A farm wife, Shambaugh was very active in her community and very focused on helping young boys and girls get a foothold in agriculture and understand its importance. In 1910, she developed a clover pin to give some of those young people. Each …
I’m Mark Oppold with an American Agriculture History Minute. Railroads dramatically changed agriculture and rural America as the country continued to grow. The concept of a rail highway was first conceived by Colonel John Stevens in 1812. The earliest railroads were horse-drawn cars running on tracks. The first chartered railroad was the Granite Railway of Massachusetts, which was approximately three …
I’m Mark Oppold with an American Agriculture History Minute. The United States Congress created the Cooperative Extension Service as part of the Smith-Lever Act in 1914. The act enabled producers and their families to receive help in agricultural production, livestock health, home economics. It also included in that Cooperative Extension Service a charter working with young boys and young girls …
I’m Mark Oppold with an American Agriculture History Minute. In the early 1930s, roughly 9 out of 10 rural homes were still without electric power. Farm families quickly learned to use every minute of sunlight for outdoor chores and lift their homes with kerosene lanterns at night. That would begin to change in May 1933, passage of the Tennessee Valley …
