Download or read book American Agriculture in the Twentieth Century written by Bruce L. Gardner and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2006-03-31 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American agriculture in the twentieth century has given the world one of its great success stories, a paradigm of productivity and plenty. Yet the story has its dark side, from the plight of the Okies in the 1930s to the farm crisis of the 1980s to today's concerns about low crop prices and the impact of biotechnology. Looking at U.S. farming over the past century, Bruce Gardner searches out explanations for both the remarkable progress and the persistent social problems that have marked the history of American agriculture. Gardner documents both the economic difficulties that have confronted farmers and the technological and economic transformations that have lifted them from relative poverty to economic parity with the nonfarm population. He provides a detailed analysis of the causes of these trends, with emphasis on the role of government action. He reviews how commodity support programs, driven by interest-group politics, have spent hundreds of billions of dollars to little purpose. Nonetheless, Gardner concludes that by reconciling competing economic interests while fostering productivity growth and economic integration of the farm and nonfarm economies, the overall twentieth-century role of government in American agriculture is fairly viewed as a triumph of democracy.
Download or read book Problems of Plenty written by R. Douglas Hurt and published by Ivan R. Dee Publisher. This book was released on 2002 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A compact narrative history of American agriculture over the last century, emphasizing the farmer's growing reliance on the federal government.
Download or read book A Revolution Down on the Farm written by Paul K. Conkin and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2008-09-01 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At a time when food is becoming increasingly scarce in many parts of the world and food prices are skyrocketing, no industry is more important than agriculture. Humans have been farming for thousands of years, and yet agriculture has undergone more fundamental changes in the past 80 years than in the previous several centuries. In 1900, 30 million American farmers tilled the soil or tended livestock; today there are fewer than 4.5 million farmers who feed a population four times larger than it was at the beginning of the century. Fifty years ago, the planet could not have sustained a population of 6.5 billion; now, commercial and industrial agriculture ensure that millions will not die from starvation. Farmers are able to feed an exponentially growing planet because the greatest industrial revolution in history has occurred in agriculture since 1929, with U.S. farmers leading the way. Productivity on American farms has increased tenfold, even as most small farmers and tenants have been forced to find other work. Today, only 300,000 farms produce approximately ninety percent of the total output, and overproduction, largely subsidized by government programs and policies, has become the hallmark of modern agriculture. A Revolution Down on the Farm: The Transformation of American Agriculture since 1929 charts the profound changes in farming that have occurred during author Paul K. Conkin's lifetime. His personal experiences growing up on a small Tennessee farm complement compelling statistical data as he explores America's vast agricultural transformation and considers its social, political, and economic consequences. He examines the history of American agriculture, showing how New Deal innovations evolved into convoluted commodity programs following World War II. Conkin assesses the skills, new technologies, and government policies that helped transform farming in America and suggests how new legislation might affect farming in decades to come. Although the increased production and mechanization of farming has been an economic success story for Americans, the costs are becoming increasingly apparent. Small farmers are put out of business when they cannot compete with giant, non-diversified corporate farms. Caged chickens and hogs in factory-like facilities or confined dairy cattle require massive amounts of chemicals and hormones ultimately ingested by consumers. Fertilizers, new organic chemicals, manure disposal, and genetically modified seeds have introduced environmental problems that are still being discovered. A Revolution Down on the Farm concludes with an evaluation of farming in the twenty-first century and a distinctive meditation on alternatives to our present large scale, mechanized, subsidized, and fossil fuel and chemically dependent system.
Download or read book The Changing Scale of American Agriculture written by John Fraser Hart and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Few Americans know much about contemporary farming, which has evolved dramatically over the past few decades. In The Changing Scale of American Agriculture, the award-winning geographer and landscape historian John Fraser Hart describes the transformation of farming from the mid-twentieth century, when small family farms were still viable, to the present, when a farm must sell at least $250,000 of farm products each year to provide an acceptable level of living for a family. The increased scale of agriculture has outmoded the Jeffersonian ideal of small, self-sufficient farms. In the past farmers kept a variety of livestock and grew several crops, but modern family farms have become highly specialized in producing a single type of livestock or one or two crops. As farms have become larger and more specialized, their number has declined. Hart contends that modern family farms need to become integrated into tightly orchestrated food-supply chains in order to thrive, and these complex new organizations of large-scale production require managerial skills of the highest order. According to Hart, this trend is not only inevitable, but it is beneficial, because it produces the food American consumers want to buy at prices they can afford. Although Hart provides the statistics and clear analysis such a study requires, his book focuses on interviews with farmers: those who have shifted from mixed crop-and-livestock farming to cash-grain farming in the Midwest agricultural heartland; beef, dairy, chicken, egg, turkey, and hog producers around the periphery of the heartland; and specialty crop producers on the East and West Coasts. These invaluable case studies bring the reader into direct personal contact with the entrepreneurs who are changing American agriculture. Hart believes that modern large-scale farmers have been criticized unfairly, and The Changing Scale of American Agriculture, the result of decades of research, is his attempt to tell their side of the story.
Download or read book Every Farm a Factory written by Deborah Kay Fitzgerald and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2008-10-01 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the early part of the 20th century farming in America was transformed from a pre-industrial to an industrial activity. This book explores the modernization of the 1920s, which saw farmers adopt not just new technology, but also the financial cultural & ideological apparatus of industrialism.
Download or read book American Agriculture written by R. Douglas Hurt and published by Purdue University Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: R. Douglas Hurt's brief history of American agriculture, from the prehistoric period through the twentieth century, is written for anyone coming to this subject for the first time. American Agriculture is a story of considerable achievement and success, but it is also a story of greed, racism, and violence. Hurt offers a provocative look at a history that has been shaped by the best and worst of human nature. Here is the background essential for understanding the complexity of American agricultural history, from the transition to commercial agriculture during the colonial period to the failure of government policy following World War II. Complete with maps, drawings, and over seventy splendid photographs, this revised edition closes with an examination of the troubled landscape at the turn of the twenty-first century. It also provides a ready reference to the economic, social, political, scientific, and technological changes that have most affected farming in America and the contributions of African Americans, Native Americans, and women. This survey will serve as a text for courses in the history of American agriculture and rural studies as well as a supplementary text for economic history and rural sociology courses.
Download or read book Farm Families and Change in 20th Century America written by Mark Friedberger and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2021-10-21 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The farm family is a unique institution, perhaps the last remnant, in an increasingly complex world, of a simpler social order in which economic and domestic activities were inextricably bound together. In the past few years, however, American agriculture has suffered huge losses, and family farmers have seen their way of life threatened by economic forces beyond their control. At a time when agriculture is at a crossroads, this study provides a needed historical perspective on the problems family farmers have faced since the turn of the century. For analysis Mark Friedberger has chosen two areas where agriculture retains major importance in the local economy—Iowa and California's Central Valley. Within these two geographic areas he examines farm families with regard to their farming methods, land tenure, inheritance practices, use of credit, and community relations. These aspects are then compared to assess change in rural society and to discern trends in the future of family farming. Despite the shocks endured by family farmers at various times in this century, Friedberger finds that some families have remained remarkably resilient. These families evinced a strong commitment to their way of life. They sought to own their land; they maintained inheritance from one generation to the next; they were generally conservative in using credit; and they preferred to diversify their enterprises. These practices served them well in good times and in bad. Innovative in its use of a combination of documentary sources, quantitative methods, and direct observation, this study makes an important contribution to the history of American agriculture and of American society.
Download or read book A Green and Permanent Land written by Randal S. Beeman and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Once patronized primarily by the counterculture and the health food establishment, the organic food industry today is a multi-billion-dollar business driven by ever-growing consumer demand for safe food and greater public awareness of ecological issues. Assumed by many to be a recent phenomenon, that industry owes much to agricultural innovations that go back to the Dust Bowl era. This book explores the roots and branches of alternative agricultural ideas in twentieth-century America, showing how ecological thought has challenged and changed agricultural theory, practice, and policy from the 1930s to the present. It introduces us to the people and institutions who forged alternatives to industrialized agriculture through a deep concern for the enduring fertility of the soil, a passionate commitment to human health, and a strong advocacy of economic justice for farmers. Randal Beeman and James Pritchard show that agricultural issues were central to the rise of the environmental movement in the United States. As family farms failed during the Depression, a new kind of agriculture was championed based on the holistic approach taught by the emerging science of ecology. Ecology influenced the "permanent agriculture" movement that advocated such radical concepts as long-term land use planning, comprehensive soil conservation, and organic farming. Then in the 1970s, "sustainable agriculture" combined many of these ideas with new concerns about misguided technology and an over-consumptive culture to preach a more sensible approach to farming. In chronicling the overlooked history of alternative agriculture, A Green and Permanent Land records the significant contributions of individuals like Rex Tugwell, Hugh Bennett, Louis Bromfield, Edward Faulkner, Russell and Kate Lord, Scott and Helen Nearing, Robert Rodale, Wes Jackson, and groups like Friends of the Land and the Practical Farmers of Iowa. And by demonstrating how agriculture also remains central to the public interest—especially in the face of climatic crises, genetically altered crops, and questionable uses of pesticides—this book puts these issues in historical perspective and offers readers considerable food for thought.
Download or read book The Development of American Agriculture written by Willard W. Cochrane and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 1979 with total page 524 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Agricultural Revolution of the 20th Century written by Don Paarlberg and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2008-02-28 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A book for a varied audience: college students of agriculture and sociology; high school students of vocation agriculture; members of the American Agricultural Economics Association; people with a long-standing background in agriculture; and other readers interested in 20th century agriculture. The book reads like a story and is supplemented with excellent photographs, contrasting past practices with modern technology.
Download or read book Agricultural Policy of the United States written by Stephanie A. Mercier and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-04-01 with total page 439 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book serves as a foundational reference of U.S. land settlement and early agricultural policy, a comprehensive journey through the evolution of 20th century agricultural policy, and a detailed guide to the key agricultural policy issues of the early 21st century. This book integrates the legal, economic and political concepts and ideas that guided U.S. agricultural policy from colonial settlement to the 21st century, and it applies those concepts to the policy issues agriculture will face over the next generation. The book is organized into three sections. Section one introduces the main themes of the book, explores the pre-Columbian period and early European settlement, and traces the first 150 years of U.S. agricultural policy starting with the post revolution period and ending with the “golden age” of agriculture in the early 20th century. Section two outlines that grand bargain of the 1930s that initiated the modern era of government intervention into agricultural markets and traces this policy evolution to the early days of the 21st century. The third section provides an in-depth examination of six policy issues that dominate current policy discussions and will impact policy decisions for the next generation: trade, environment/conservation, commodity checkoff programs, crop insurance, biofuels, and domestic nutrition programs.
Download or read book J C Penney written by David Delbert Kruger and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2017-05-18 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is now called JCPenney, a fixture of suburban shopping malls, started out as a small-town Main Street store that fused its founder’s interests in agriculture, retail business, religion, and philanthropy. This book—at once a biography of Missouri farm boy–turned–business icon James Cash Penney and the story of the company he started in 1902—brings to light the little-known agrarian roots of an American department store chain. David Delbert Kruger explores how the company, its stores, and their famous founder shaped rural America throughout the twentieth century. “Most of our stores,” Penney explained in 1931, “are located in agricultural regions where the tide of merchandising rises and falls with the prosperity of the farmers.” Despite the growth of cities in the early twentieth century, Penney maintained his stores’ commitment to serving the needs of farmers and small-town folk. Tracing this dedication to Penney’s rural upbringing, Kruger describes how, from one store in the sheep-ranching and mining town of Kemmerer, Wyoming, J. C. Penney Co. became a familiar chain on Main Street, USA, purveying value, providing good jobs, and marking rites of passage in many an American childhood. Kruger paints a biographical and historical picture of an American business mogul distinctly different from comparable capitalists such as Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford, or Sam Walton. Despite his chain’s corporate structure, Penney imbued each store with a Golden Rule philosophy that demanded mutual respect between customers, employees, competitors, suppliers, and communities. By tracing that spirit to its agrarian source, and following it through the twentieth century, J. C. Penney: The Man, the Store, and American Agriculture provides a new perspective on this American cultural institution—and on its founder’s unique brand of American capitalism.
Download or read book Dispossession written by Pete Daniel and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2013-03-29 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between 1940 and 1974, the number of African American farmers fell from 681,790 to just 45,594--a drop of 93 percent. In his hard-hitting book, historian Pete Daniel analyzes this decline and chronicles black farmers' fierce struggles to remain on the land in the face of discrimination by bureaucrats in the U.S. Department of Agriculture. He exposes the shameful fact that at the very moment civil rights laws promised to end discrimination, hundreds of thousands of black farmers lost their hold on the land as they were denied loans, information, and access to the programs essential to survival in a capital-intensive farm structure. More than a matter of neglect of these farmers and their rights, this "passive nullification" consisted of a blizzard of bureaucratic obfuscation, blatant acts of discrimination and cronyism, violence, and intimidation. Dispossession recovers a lost chapter of the black experience in the American South, presenting a counternarrative to the conventional story of the progress achieved by the civil rights movement.
Download or read book War Agriculture and Food written by Paul Brassley and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume of essays examines one of the crucial periods in the evolution of the European rural economy and society, assessing the effects of the Second World War on the European countryside, and the impact of food and agricultural problems on the outcome of the war.
Download or read book Size Structure And The Changing Face Of American Agriculture written by Arne Hallam and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2019-09-05 with total page 643 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents the latest findings on past changes in structure, the factors that lead to structural change, its effect on societal welfare and what will happen to the structure of agriculture in the years ahead. The book provides insights on issues such as the family farm, the industrialization of agriculture and the impact of agricultural technology on the environment.
Download or read book American Agriculture and Farm Policy Since 1900 written by Gilbert Courtland Fite and published by . This book was released on 1964 with total page 42 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book American Agriculture and the Problem of Monopoly written by Jon Lauck and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2016-02-01 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The breathtaking number of mergers and joint ventures among agribusiness firms has left independent American farmers facing the power of an increasingly concentrated buying sector. The origin of farmers’ concern with such economic concentration dates back to protests against meatpackers and railroads in the late nineteenth century. Jon Lauck examines the dimensions of this problem in the American Midwest in the decades following World War II. He analyzes the nature of competition within meat-packing and grain markets. In addition, he addresses concerns about corporate entry into production agriculture and the potential displacement of a production system defined by independent family farms. Lauck also considers the ability of farmers to organize in order to counter the market power of large-scale agribusiness buyers. He explores the use of farmer cooperatives and other mechanisms which may increase the bargaining power of farmers. The book offers the first serious historical examination of the National Farmers Organization, which fully embraced the bargaining power cause in the postwar period. Lauck finds that independent farmers’ attempts at organization have been more successful than previously recognized, but he also shows that their successes have been undermined by the growing concentration and power of agri-business firms, justifying a new approach to antitrust law in agricultural markets.
