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Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been categorized as “Features”
I’m Mark Oppold with an American Agriculture History Minute. Agricultural production continued to expand in the early 1800s, but still by 1850, it took 75 to 90 labor hours to produce 100 bushels of corn, and that took 2.5 to 3 acres. That would begin to change. 1862 to 1875 signaled a major change in agriculture from hand power to …
I’m Mark Oppold with an American Agriculture History Minute. In 1850, it’s estimated that it took 75 to 90 labor hours to produce 100 bushels of corn and took about two and a half to three acres to do that. By 1890, that was reduced to 35 to 40 labor hours but the same 100 bushels and two and a …
I’m Mark Oppold with an American Agriculture History Minute. Irishman Harry Ferguson is part of American Agriculture History. He’s credited with developing and patent the first hydraulic lift with automatic draft control. By 1933, he had patented a way to attach and implement to a tractor by three arms. Ferguson’s three-point hitch was probably the most revolutionary improvement in tractor …
I’m Mark Oppold with an American Agriculture History Minute. In the early 1900s, American agriculture continued to expand and diversify. The first ten years of the century, George Washington Carver, who was director of agricultural research at Tuskegee Institute at the time, pioneered finding new uses for peanuts, sweet potatoes and soybeans, and thus helped diversify Southern agriculture. Additionally, the …
I’m Mark Oppold with an American Agriculture History Minute. The 1870s was the first major agricultural revolution with moving from hand power to horsepower. But also in the 1870s, silos came into use for the first time. Elsewhere in the 1870s, deep well drilling was first widely used and, an important patent, barbed wire in 1874. The availability of barbed …
I’m Mark Oppold with an American Agriculture History Minute. In 1860, Horace Greeley wrote in his New York Tribune newspaper, “I would not live in Minnesota because you can’t grow apples there”. Indeed, no one at that time had solved the short growing season, but that finally changed in 1868 when horticulturalist Peter Gideon cultivated and grew an apple that …
I’m Mark Oppold with an American Agriculture History Minute. Anna Baldwin is part of American agriculture history. In 1879, she patented the first milking machine that replaced hand milking. Her milking machine was a vacuum device that connected to a hand pump. This is one of the earliest known American patents for the dairy industry. However, it was not a …
I’m Mark Oppold with an American Agriculture History Minute. After a long dry trek across what is now Nebraska and Kansas, early settlers saw little or no value when crossing over to what is now Colorado. The soil was even sandier than that in western Kansas, western Nebraska. Rivers were unnavigable. That all changed in the late 1800s when word …
I’m Mark Oppold with an American Agriculture History Minute. Early settlers found a lot to like once they crossed the Appalachians and settled in states like Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, and Iowa. But there was not much to like about Colorado. According to historians, when first settlers arrived there, in fact, many decided the difficult trail through the Rockies onto Oregon …
I’m Mark Oppold with an American Agriculture History Minute. Machinery, livestock, and crops have always been needed to be moved around the farm or to market. Two-wheel carts suffice for early settlers. Soon four-wheeled wagons became the norm and were universally used for two centuries. Now it’s impossible, historians say, to pin down the first motor truck. But the first …
