Farming on the Great Plains

10 Key excerpts on "Farming on the Great Plains"

• 

  eBook - PDF

  The Archaeology of the North American Great Plains

  • Douglas B. Bamforth(Author)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  CHAPTER 7 THE CONTEXT OF MAIZE Farming on the Great Plains As the next three chapters discuss, communities of maize farmers appeared in a limited area at the northeastern edge of the grasslands during the 10th century and over a much larger area in the following centuries. This shift had implications for virtually every aspect of the lives the people in these com- munities and their neighbors lived, as did similar shifts throughout the world. This chapter presents a background to these changes on the Great Plains. Chapters 8 through 10 examine the archaeology of Plains farmers and their hunter-gatherer neighbors from AD 950 to AD 1500 more concretely with this background in mind. BECOMING A FARMER The shift from hunting and gathering to a dependence on domesticated plants is arguably the most significant transformation in human history. This trans- formation did not occur everywhere, it did not occur everywhere on the Great Plains, and it did not always take the same form when it did occur. However, the shift to agriculture had common themes throughout the world. Planting crops in a specific place ties people to that place and ties them more strongly as cultigens comprise a greater proportion of the diet. This is true in the sense that gardens need attention and in the sense that families need predictable access to land in order to plant and harvest from year to year. Long-term land rights matter to farmers in ways they generally do not matter to mobile hunters and gatherers. Allocating human effort is also a kind of zero-sum game, meaning that the time people spend clearing fields and planting, tending, and harvesting crops cannot be spent doing other things. The material payoff for all of this is increased yield from the region a community inhabits. Farming is thus a kind of intensification through special- ization that limits the ability of human communities to engage in other activities. 195

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  A Companion to American Agricultural History

  • R. Douglas Hurt(Author)
  • 2022(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-Blackwell

    (Publisher)

  Fite, the most respected agricultural historian in the land, speaks of a history of farmers “in a life and death struggle with the natural environment.” He warns that the chronic precariousness of agricultural enterprise is now aggravated by higher production and living costs. The outlook is sobering. It sounds like the end of agricultural history on the Great Plains. A review of the region’s agricultural history and the efforts of its historians reminds us that the distilled wisdom of 1976, assumed to be conclusive, was in fact only another snapshot in the long and continuing arc of agriculture on the Great Plains. Bibliographical Essay The foregoing chapter may be considered historiographic, but more essentially, it is episte- mological. It undertakes to explain how our understanding of agriculture on the Great Plains took shape in the way that it has. This bibliographic essay makes more explicit the building blocks composing the intellectual construction. Note: for additional factual background on aspects of the history of Great Plains agriculture, see applicable sections of David J. Wishart’s Encyclopedia of the Great Plains (2004). Classic primary narratives are used in this chapter to impart a flavor of early agricultural experience. For example, the recollections of the Hidatsa woman Maxidiwiac, Buffalo Bird Woman, are without parallel as to sustained narrative description of Indian agriculture (Wil- son 1917, 1987). Open-range cattle ranching is rich in good narratives, because the subject had a public. The cattle-buyer Joseph G. McCoy writes frankly of the commercial origins of the long drive (1874); Andy Adams situates the narrative on the trail north (1903); while Baron von Richthofen (1885) exposes the speculative boom that financed the range cattle industry. Marvin J. Hunter’s compendious compilation of cattle-trailing narratives (1920) evidences the iconographic appeal of the open range.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  The American Steppes

  The Unexpected Russian Roots of Great Plains Agriculture, 1870s–1930s

  • David Moon(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  –.  See Dan Flores, The Natural West: Environmental History in the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, ), pp. –; Andrew Isenberg, The Destruction of the Bison: An Environmental History (New York: Cambridge University Press, ); Cunfer and Waiser, eds., Bison and People. Settlement  Great Plains. As the settlers converted much of the land to farms and ranches, for crops and grazing, they greatly reduced the rich biodiversity of a region once inhabited by such an array of wild life that Dan Flores called it the “American Serengeti.”  The native flora of the vast areas of grasslands, with tall grasses in the east and short grasses in the west, and the colorful array of wild flowers and other plants, became increasingly rare as land was plowed up, sown with crops introduced from outside, in addition to corn, or subjected to intensive grazing.  Geoff Cunfer has termed plowing grassland as “the ecological equivalent of genocide,” and the “plow-up of the Great Plains” as “the most important ecological change to emerge out of the shift from Indian to Euro-American land use.” “The act of plowing,” Cunfer continued, “alters vegetation, animal populations, water dynamics, and soil chemistry and physics in cata- strophic ways.”  Russian scientists have made similar assessments of plowing up the steppes.  From the perspective of the first generation of Euro-American settlers, this transformation of the plains environment entailed back-breaking labor as they engaged in the “arduous, expensive, and time-consuming process” of “sod busting”: breaking up the “hard, compact, and tenacious” soil bound by the dense and thickly matted roots of the prairie grasses that had been growing there largely undisturbed for millennia. This was not just very hard work for the settlers, but required particular techniques, special plows, and heavy oxen to pull them.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Agricultural Prairies

  Natural Resources and Crop Productivity

  • K. R. Krishna(Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Apple Academic Press

    (Publisher)

  They severely alter affect soil nutrient dynamics, moisture availability, crop growth pat-tern, and yield formation. They enhance loss of soil C and nutrients. 1.5.2 CROP PRODUCTION IN GREAT PLAINS 1.5.3 AGRONOMIC PRACTICES IN VOGUE IN GREAT PLAINS According to Cash and Johnson (2003), there are at least five different production systems that are in vogue in the Great Plains region. Over 90 percent of the produc-tion systems are related to crop production and ranching. Crop production zones are predominant and occupy 75 percent of Great Plains. The five major production sys-tems identified are Crop-fallows, Groundwater (aquifer) irrigation supported crop-ping, River valley irrigation supported crop production, that is dependent on snow-melt phenomenon, Forage production and confined livestock feeding, and Range and large pasture dependent livestock farming. Within the context of this book, we are concerned more about agronomic procedures and techniques adopted during crop production in large expanses supported by natural precipitation, various irriga-tion sources, and fertilizer-based nutrient supply. Agronomic procedures adopted by Great Plains farmers have actually evolved through the ages. Each set of procedures has imparted its effect on soils, crop fields, and land scape in general. For example, conventional tillage induced more of oxidative reactions, decomposition of SOC, and evolution of CO 2 . No-tillage systems that are recently popular conserve SOC, reduce soil erosion, and loss of nutrients. 1.5.4 TRADITIONAL/CONVENTIONAL SYSTEMS Native Indians practiced subsistence farming in the Great Plains for a long period. Land and soil management practices were feeble. Tillage, if any, was negligible or nil. Seeds were hand dibbled. Inter-culturing to remove weeds was done using handheld implements. The advent of European settlers induced large-scale farm-ing, tractors, and other mechanical implements.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  The Grasslands of the United States

  An Environmental History

  • James E. Sherow, Mark R. Stoll(Authors)
  • 2007(Publication Date)
  • ABC-CLIO

    (Publisher)

  Here, in wind- and heat-ravaged lands, was to be the Great Plains of the future where careful plant- ing would restore forests in the foothills; soil conservation and sensible grazing practices would restore soil fertility and grass productivity; and scientific agri- culture would yield fewer, more prosperous, and comfortable farmers tilling larger, more efficiently managed acreage. This was the collective foresight of five prominent New Dealers, who in 1936 published The Future of the Great Plains, a guidebook for achieving sus- Important People, Events, and Concepts 289 tainable farming in the grasslands. Secretary of Agriculture Henry A. Wallace, director of the Works Progress Administration Harry Hopkins, director of the Soil Conservation Service Hugh Bennett, administrator of the Resettlement Ad- ministration Rexford G. Tugwell, and director of the Rural Electrification Ad- ministration Morris Cooke, who also served as the committee chairman, were the signatories of the report. These men served in critical governmental capaci- ties, and the reverberations of their and their staffs’ thinking still shape the gen- eral contours of agricultural policy throughout the grasslands today. The man- ner in which they understood the social, economic, and ecological problems of the Great Plains and the way they attempted to alleviate these difficulties lend insight into the predicaments faced by people living in the grasslands now. The ecological, economic, and social problems relating to the Great Plains prompted President Franklin D. Roosevelt to request this study in the first place. He wanted concrete recommendations for future legislation to ameliorate the crisis engulfing the region. The president saw the problem rather simply. In short, traditional farming practices in the eastern portion of the United States bore poor fruits when applied to the grasslands.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  Great Plains Regional Technical Input Report

  • Dennis Ojima, Jean Steiner, Shannon McNeeley, Karen Cozzetto, Amber Childress(Authors)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • NCA Regional Input Reports

    (Publisher)

  Table 2.1 ). Changes in land use management, climate, and hydrological extremes will impact how natural resources will be utilized and sustained over time in the Great Plains, affecting the region’s social wellbeing and ecosystem integrity.

  In the nine Great Plains states (Colorado, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, and Wyoming) there are approximately 510,405 farms and 340,653,196 total acres (1,378,575 km2 ) in farms (USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service 2009). Approximately 42% or 143 million acres (578,700 km2 ) is in cropland and approximately 52% or 178 million acres (720,300 km2 ) is in permanent / native pastures. Of the 143 million acres (578,700 km2 ) of cropland, in 2007 over 22 million acres (89,000 km2 ) were planted to corn, over 4.8 million acres (19,400 km2 ) were planted to cotton, over 5.6 million acres (22,700 km2 ) were planted to sorghum, over 14.2 million acres (57,500 km2 ) were planted to soybeans, and over 29.5 million acres (119,400 km2 ) were planted to wheat (USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service 2009). An additional 14.8 million acres (59,900 km2 ) of cropland were in improved pastures and 15 million acres (60,700 km2 ) of Great Plains farmland were in the CRP program.

  BEEF CATTLE PRODUCTION

  Because of the vast quantities of native rangelands, livestock production (mostly beef cattle) is one of the most important sectors in US Great Plains agriculture, both economically and socially. On average, 30% (North Plains) to 68% (South Plains) of total farm production value in the Great Plains comes from beef cattle (McBride and Matthews 2011).

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  Agriculture and Community Change in the U.S.

  The Congressional Research Reports

  • Louis E. Swanson(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Taylor & Francis

    (Publisher)

  Beef has been a highly protected U.S. industry in terms of foreign import competition, both directly through tariffs and indirectly through high health standards, particularly those health problems arising from low capital input, such as foot and mouth disease and tapeworm. Until recently, the U.S. has largely been immune to the imposition of standards related to potential health hazards of high technology beef production, such as the use of growth hormones and antibiotics in feed. Any change in these standards, domestically or internationally, could change the conditions for beef production and for the communities that depend on it. In addition, a secular decline in the demand for beef, plus a shift in the type of beef preferred by consumers, could lead to a shift away from feedlots to grass-fed beef. Such a change in production practices could cut production costs, but decrease the employment generated and the capital circulated in feedlot activities in many rural communities.

  Wheat- and Livestock-Based Farming Systems, Community Welfare and Public Policy

  Methodology of County Selection

  We analyzed farming dependent counties in the Great Plains and the West. The end of the Great Plains and the beginning of the West is defined chiefly by amount of rainfall. Annual precipitation in the Great Plains ranges from more than 40 inches in eastern Texas to less than 20 inches along the western border of the region. In areas of the West considered agricultural, annual precipitation ranges from 25 inches or less in most river valleys to 6 inches or less in intermountain basins and southern desert areas. Much of the land outside the river valleys is owned by Federal or state governments, which regulate access by agriculturalists. Grazing is the principal agricultural land use.

  The tier of states from Texas to North Dakota are included in the Great Plains, as well as northeast New Mexico, the eastern half of Colorado, the eastern portion of Montana, and the westernmost part of Minnesota. The western half of South Dakota and northwestern Nebraska, areas in which grazing on federally owned public land is common, are considered part of the West. The frost-free period in the areas under consideration varies from less than 100 days in North Dakota to over ten months in southern Texas.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Dirt

  The Erosion of Civilizations, With a New Preface

  • David R. Montgomery(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • University of California Press

    (Publisher)

  That much land could yield a fortune in California. On the plains, an industrious family could starve trying to farm twice as much. Undeterred by nay-saying pessimists, land boosters advertised the unlimited agricultural potential of the plains, popularizing the notion that “rain follows the plow.” It certainly helped their pitch that settlers started plowing the Great Plains during a wet spell. Between 1870 and 1900 , American farmers brought as much virgin land into cultivation as they had in the previous two centuries. Mostly crops were good at first. Then the drought came. d u s t b l o w 1 4 7 The late nineteenth-century advent of widespread lending encouraged Oklahoma’s new farmers to borrow liberally and pay off the interest on their loans by mining soil in aggressive production for export markets. Just over two decades after the Oklahoma land rush, farmers plowed up forty million acres of virgin prairie to cash in on high grain prices during the First World War. In the above-average rainfall of the early 1900 s, millions of acres of prairie became amber fields of grain. Relatively few paused to consider what would happen should high winds accompany the next inevitable drought. In 1902 the twenty-second annual report of the U.S. Geological Survey concluded that the semiarid High Plains from Nebraska to Texas were fatally vulnerable to rapid erosion if plowed: “The High Plains, in short, are held by their sod.” With rainfall too low to support crops consistently, grazing was the only long-term use for which the “hopelessly nonagricul-tural” region was well suited. 1 Once stripped of sod, the loess soil would not stay put under the high winds and pounding rains of the open prairie. The survey’s findings were no match for land speculation and the high crop prices during the First World War. A century later, talk of returning the region to large-scale grazing as a buffalo commons echoes the survey’s far-sighted advice.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Sustainability and Communities of Place

  • Carl A. Maida(Author)
  • 2007(Publication Date)
  • Berghahn Books

    (Publisher)

  Evolving local practices have long-term effects, not imme-diately evident to practitioners, of reducing local self-sufficiency and making farmers more vulnerable to international economic and social forces. Sustainability in the High Plains Region of the U.S. 155 Acknowledgments I would like to thank the anonymous interviewees who contributed to this paper, as well as David E. Kromm, Barbara Yablon Maida, and Carl A. Maida for reviewing an earlier draft. Any errors or omissions remain my responsibility. Donna C. Roper drew the maps, John L. Johnson provided assistance with cen-sus materials, and Orlen Grunewald answered questions on the beef industry. Notes 1. The Homestead Act of 1862, which allowed settlers to claim 160 acres of free land, was enacted to stop speculative land purchases and to create a society of small property owners. In 1909, an expanded Homestead Act increased the acreage to 320 (Gates 1977: 111,124; Merrill 1996:434). 2. In western Kansas, the High Plains aquifer, a large concentration of sands, silts, gravels, and clays, is generally identical with the Ogallala formation, and the aquifer system is referred to as the Ogallala aquifer. In south-central Kansas (east of Dodge City) the aquifer is seen as geologically distinct and known as the High Plains aquifer (Buddemeier 2004). 3. That is, in states where union membership is not compulsory (“right-to-work” states). The unions that do exist often cooperate closely with management. 4. Those who have opted to remain more or less permanently in the United States rather than return to their home country, most commonly Mexico. References Agrawal, Arun. 2003. “Sustainable Governance of Common-Pool Resources: Context, Methods, and Politics.” Annual Review of Anthropology 32: 243-62. Benson, Janet E. 1994a. “The Effects of Packinghouse Work on Southeast Asian Refugee Families.” In Newcomers in the Workplace, ed. Louise Lamphere, Alex Stepick, and Guillermo Grenier.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  The Prairie West as Promised Land

  • R. Douglas Francis, Chris Kitzan(Authors)
  • 2007(Publication Date)
  • University of Calgary Press

    (Publisher)

  External inputs in the way of seed-grain relief, subsidies, or rations were often necessary as the re-sources of a fixed locality could not always sustain the inhabitants. 107 5:THE PLAINS CREE AND AGRICULTURE TO 1900 The buffalo was the foundation of the Plains economy, providing people not only with a crucial source of protein and vitamins but with many other necessities, including shelter, clothing, containers, and tools. Aboriginal life on the Plains followed a pattern of concentration and dispersal that to a great extend paralleled that of the buffalo. But Plains people were not solely hunters of buffalo. To rely on one staple resource alone was risky in the Plains environment, as there were periodic short-ages of buffalo, and it was mainly the gathering and preserving work of women, based on their intimate understanding of the Plains environ-ment, that varied the subsistence base and contributed to “risk reduc-tion,” a role the immigrant women to the Plains would also acquire. Mid-summer camp movements were determined not only by the buffalo but by considerations such as the ripeness and location of saskatoon ber-ries, the prairie turnip, and other fruits and tubers. Many of the food-stuffs women gathered were dried, pounded, or otherwise preserved and stored for the scarce times of winter. Women fished, snared small game, caught prairie chickens and migratory birds, and gathered their eggs. A high degree of mobility was essential for people effectively to draw on the varied resources of the Plains. Nineteenth-century European observers tended to see the Great Plains as a timeless land, as a place without history, its people unaf-fected by any outside forces and leaving no mark of their presence upon the land.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book