AGRICULTURE INDUSTRY

From the founding of Virginia in 1607 until the late 1890s agriculture played a predominant economic role in the United States. The early settlers adopted the Native American practices of growing corn, squash, and tobacco. Initially corn was the primary food crop, while tobacco was exported to earn foreign exchange. In New England most farmers raised multiple food crops as well as livestock, producing enough for their family needs with some surplus goods for sale.

Agriculture in the South became more specialized and commercialized than in the North. By the late seventeenth century tobacco, rice, and indigo became major commercial crops. Production expanded rapidly in conjunction with the plantation system that utilized the labor of African American slaves. Cotton became an important commercial crop with the invention of the cotton gin in 1793 by Eli Whitney (1765–1825).

At the beginning of the nineteenth century significant changes occurred in the farming sector of the economy. Tens of thousands of settlers migrated west to settle in the Ohio and Mississippi valleys between the time of the American Revolution (1775-1783) and the American Civil War (1861–1865). This produced the vast productive potential of grain and livestock farmers. By 1860 the United States had 2,044,077 farms. The U.S. government actively supported the farming community by promoting liberal public land policies, developing canal and rail transportation and reallocating choice farmland from Native Americans to prospective settlers.

Prior to the American Civil War the introduction of animal power and labor-saving machinery provided one of the greatest advances in agricultural history. Innovations such as iron plows, threshing machines, grain drills, and cultivators became common. The McCormick agricultural equipment company in Chicago led the mechanization of farming. In 1800 it took approximately 56 man-hours to plant and harvest one acre of wheat. By 1840, with mechanization the same acre of wheat took only 35 man-hours to achieve the same result.

Agriculture became the engine behind the U.S. economic development in the first half of the nineteenth century. By 1860 the two million farms in the United States produced 838 million bushels of corn, 172 million bushels of wheat, 5.4 million bales of cotton, and millions of pounds of tobacco. Increasingly farmers began to sell their produce to purchase manufactured goods. In 1860 farm products comprised 82 percent of U.S. exports. This helped support the foreign exchange used for investment in U.S. manufacturing and transportation.

Following the American Civil War agricultural expansion accelerated at an even higher rate with the migration of farmers to the Great Plains. Further, with the end of slavery, African American sharecroppers worked on hundreds of thousands of small farms in the South. Between 1860 and 1916 the number of farms grew from two million to 6.4 million. Farm acreage doubled from 407 million to 879 million acres. With the increased acreage and the introduction of better machinery, the production of commercial crops continued to increase tremendously. The great deflationary crisis of the last third of the nineteenth century stemmed from precisely this "crisis of over-production" in agriculture. Productivity on the farm had outstripped the market demand for farm produce. From about 1873 to the end of the century, this glutted farm commodity market became a drag on the rest of the economy. It also produced a strong protest movement in the Farmers' Alliance movements and the Populist challenge. Farmers did not always know what lay behind their distress. At different points they blamed the railroads, the elevator (crop storage facilities) companies, and the bankers. But they eventually focused on the need for "parity," a government subsidy for a fair return on their outlay of labor and capital.

By World War I (1914–1918) the agricultural landscape of the United States settled into regional patterns. Farmers in the Northeast focused on dairy, poultry, and fruits and vegetables for the urban market. In the Midwest grain crops such as wheat, corn, and barley supported a thriving cattle and hog business. The region of the Great Plains from Texas to the Canadian border became known as the nation's bread-basket, with wheat being the primary commercial crop. Agriculture in the Rocky Mountain States focused on cattle and sheep raising, while most of the crops in the Far West depended on irrigation. In the South cotton continued to be the main cash crop until after World War II (1939–1945).

After World War I the overproduction crisis continued to trouble American agriculture, with farm prices generally in decline. None of the measures taken by the U.S. Government solved the problem of low returns to farmers. However in 1933, during the Great Depression, Congress passed the Agricultural Adjustment Act, which introduced a wide range of federal programs to help the farmer. These programs—which involved paying farmers to leave their land fallow in order to create a shortage in farm commodities and an upturn in prices—continued throughout the rest of the twentieth century. Government payments to farmers in 1934 totaled $134 million; by 1961 payments increased to __BODY__.5 billion and by 1987 to $22 billion.

In the 1930s agriculture underwent significant changes due to the advancements in technology and the introduction of science to farming. The use of the gasoline tractor ended the horse age of farming shortly after World War II. The continued development of better machinery made the farming industry less labor-intensive. The contribution from science included the growing use of chemicals for fertilizers and insecticides, and the breeding of hybrid strains producing better crops and healthier livestock. These and other developments increased the nation's agricultural productivity without a proportionate increase in acreage. The amount of farmland in use remained constant at about 1 billion acres between 1930 and 1980. However crop production increased dramatically. For example, corn production increased from 20 bushels an acre in 1930 to about 110 bushels half a century later. In 1980 one-third of farm production was sold overseas and agricultural exports made up about 20 percent of the nation's foreign sales.

By the end of the twentieth century, new trends emerged in agriculture. These include organic farming and the reduced use of chemicals in response to health and environmental issues. Crop and livestock production has also changed as farmers made increased use of biotechnology and genetic engineering. Farmers continue to have increased capabilities to cultivate more land and handle more livestock with less labor. This resulted in a sharp increase in the average size of farms and a rapid decline in the number of farmers. In 1940 there were 6.1 million farms averaging 215 acres in size. By 1980 only 2.4 million farms remained, averaging 431 acres. In spite of this trend over 90 percent of farms in the United States continue to be operated by families rather than agricultural corporations.

Throughout U.S. history farming was an important economic activity. By the end of the twentieth century it became a business that required skilled labor, capital, and good management. In addition, most people in the United States had little direct contact or involvement with this industry. By the 1980s the number of people living on farms had declined to less than 2.5 percent of the population. Agriculture had shifted from a simple commercial venture to a specialized business.

AGRICULTURE INDUSTRY

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