I’m Mark Oppold with an American Agriculture History Minute. Agriculture in what is now Colorado began taking shape in the early 1850s. Then Rocky Mountain News founder William N. Byers passed out seeds to make his newspaper the principal chronicle of early farming in Colorado. By the 1870s, Byers facilitated the colony of Greeley, Colorado’s first major agricultural settlement and …
American Agriculture History Minute: Boone Teaches Farming Methods
I’m Mark Oppold with an American Agriculture History Minute. In the early 1820s, after the Louisiana purchase of 1803, the U.S. government decided to conduct agricultural experiments in what is now Kansas. Native Indians had long planted corn in northeast Kansas, and the government saw potential in expanding trade west of Kansas City. Records show the government sent Daniel Morgan …
American Agriculture History Minute: Colorado Dust Bowl
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 transformed …
American Agriculture History Minute: The First Real Pioneer Farmers
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 …
American Agriculture History Minute: Tractor Supply Company Starts as a Mail-Order Company
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, …
American Agriculture History Minute: Kansas Becomes the Wheat State
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 …
American Agriculture History Minute: Development of Agriculture in Kansas
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 did …
American Agriculture History Minute: Beginning of Allis-Chalmers
I’m Mark Oppold with an American Agriculture History Minute. Edward P. Alice 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. He came to the United States about 1842, and …
American Agriculture History Minute: The Ralston Purina Checkerboard Logo Beginning
I’m Mark Oppold with an American Agriculture History Minute. The Ralston Purina checkerboard logo is one of the most identifiable logos in American agriculture. It has its history dating back to 1904. The logo came from the company’s founder, William Danforth, who as a child often dressed in checkerboard cloth. We’re not sure this happened out of necessity or by …
American Agriculture History Minute: Agronomist Played a Key Role in the Green Revolution
I’m Mark Oppold with an American Agriculture History Minute. He was an agronomist who played a key role in what’s known as the Green Revolution. His work won him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970, later the Congressional Gold Medal of Honor and, later, Presidential Medal of Freedom, all for his work in increasing agricultural production as America continued to …