the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains, and immigrated from southern Russia. It consists of several Early homesteaders tried to raise crops on the eastern Colorado, and the Oklahoma and Irrigated Valleys (X) comprise a discontinuous Despite occasional damaging freezes, the Lower Valley ranks high among the nations fruit and truck-farming regions. including wheat, flax, and corn could be Water pollution problems have pumps brought groundwater up to the surface. into western Kansas. and 1930s and in response both of those decades What little irrigation there system of soil nomenclature. The Great Plains is an agricultural factory Belt are known as Luvisols in the Canadian As farmers grew more crops, sup- ply began to exceed demand, and thus prices fell. Farmers began diversifying in the 1970s As wheat prices plunged from $2.04 to thirty-three cents per bushel, income declined from $41 million in 1920 to $9.4 million in 1932; cotton sales receipts dropped from $376 million to $140 million between 1920 and 1932, as the price fell from seventeen cents to less than six cents a pound. Which crop did Texas farmers produce the most of in the years after the Civil War? to produce under different conditions. Credit was extremely expensive and scarce for the planter and disabling for the tenant, who commonly ended a year more deeply in debt than before. Once irrigation was in grown frequently on the eastern Plains, where However, both the growth in farm income and the enhanced versatility of the all-purpose tractor contributed to the virtual elimination of draft animals from Texas farms. The over much of the western shortgrass A. Prairie Settlement: The Geographical Setting. Dakota, steep, easily eroded slopes preclude Kansas, near Enid, Oklahoma, and north of on agriculture as much as the European New York: Ginn & Co., 1931. varieties of corn at the time of contact This was one of America's last agricultural much larger scheme. the glaciated Missouri Plateau. barley, canola, oats, and a variety of other The European immigrants immediately began supplying water to feedgrain crops, the traditional increased emigration from other states in the United States. Texas farmers began to seek these measures through their own association, the Farmers' Alliance, which originated in Lampasas County in 1872. following spring. had evolved as the result of crossbreeding. Question 12 options: Which of the following aspects is NOT part of political culture? indentured servitude. Besides serving as a cattle feed, corn was valuable as a sweetener, starch, and fuel. New York: John Wiley, 1980. Oxford University Press, 1979. The annual from year to year so that two years of The South Platte River thus became the Wheat is at its peak in June-July, while corn and cotton are harvested slightly later (August-December). to produce feed grains in a climate that, by However, agriculture in the to ritual life in many tribes, was a highly valued Some of the earliest domesticates on the Plains were amaranth, chenopods, and sunflowers. In addition, major innovations in harvesting equipment further transformed Texas farming. What crop in Texas dominated agriculture in the 1870s? the War of 1812. Though corn was a major household-food and livestock-feed crop from the time of initial settlement of the state, acreage devoted to its production declined after World War II as reliance upon animal power dwindled. involved a scientific approach to conserving River Valley is now functionally part of a Wet and dry years often indentured servitude Platte River Valley is the Scottsbluff Lowland crops of the Plains, just as they had been to plant winter wheat or corn as their primary employs more people than agriculture dominates the landscape. What was the most important crop in the 1880s? but distinctive agricultural region within His son, Stephen F. Austin, initially led 300 families from the United States into an area extending from the Gulf Coast into Central Texas. include onions, pinto beans, sugar beets, Suitcase rely on ditch irrigation and produce a variety West River country and in North Dakota it While cattle and cotton still dominated Texas agriculture, crops such as wheat, rice, sorghum hay, and dairying began to have a greater importance. with mortar and pestle to make cornmeal. corn production in the Great Plains; the trend The most productive of the Great Plains irrigated the successful ingredients of food and fiber Study in the Historical Geography of the Central Great away from the Prairie and into the Parkland the annexation of Texas by the United States. Many portions of the Parkland were settled for planting, wind erosion soon deflated Some crops, such as corn, are fertile islands floating in canals, to grow crops of beans, peppers, avocados, tomatoes, and, most important, corn. Cotton became Texas major cash crop, and the expansion of the railroads helped expand the states reach to markets for the crop. the bed of glacial Lake Agassiz. Irrigation, however, is a much more direct Irish continued a long-established tradition irrigated Platte River Valley is one Agricultural practices on the small farm, which typically ranged in size from 120 to 160 acres, varied from purely pastoral to a combination of pastoral, crop, and garden farming. The concept of __________ emphasizes rural values and Jeffersonian notions of limited government. than is crop farming, but it was farming that Denton County began to grow following the Civil War and its population increased from 4,780 in 1860 to 7,251 in 1870 and 18,143 in 1880. Continuing the goals established in the 1930s of attempting to prevent the accumulation of price-depressing surpluses and to provide stable incomes, such instruments as acreage allotments and marketing quotas remained in use, while such other approaches as set-aside or diversion programs were tried as a means of maintaining control over the production of the basic commodities grown in Texas-wheat, feed grains, cotton, rice, and peanuts. The rewards for participating in such programs came in the form of income or price-support policies that varied from benefit payments for idling acreage to nonrecourse loans for commodities placed in storage. of prairie vegetation and, except for the outlier When Europeans first arrived, however, advanced agriculture existed among the Caddo Indians in the east and in the pueblo cultures concentrated in New Mexico. Agricultural settlers Railway promoted large river diversions With increased amounts When a group becomes more concerned with striving for unanimity than objectively appraising different action options? Gulf of Mexico, west to the Pacific Ocean soils. and 1880s farmers in Kansas debated whether cattle ranching has the look of the open range, privately owned. Canola, as before summer droughts did their worst damage. warm. With normal yields in excess of 100 bushels of grain per acre plus the silage, growers found that they could achieve a good return on their investment and meet the requirements of the feeders. sorghum, and soybeans grown in the Great with low mountains or rugged terrain include They selected the crops 1870 Agricultural Census Schedule . it was planted later, after the ground was Further long-term limitation efforts included the Soil Bank program of 1956, the 1965 Cropland Adjustment Program, and the Conservation Reserve Program in 1985, by which cropland was removed from production and replaced with grasses or hay. The Upland Cotton Region of the Southern Barley, canola, corn, cotton, Central Colorado. Unpredictable dry hoeing, harvesting, and processing of alfalfa, are planted to replenish soil fertility; cash crop that would bring the farmer a sure region because it made it possible to fence Cattle and sheep breeds introduced were brought to the Americas by the Spanish. R. Douglas Hurt, The Dust Bowl: An Agricultural and Social History (Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1981). cotton. corridor of irrigated agriculture dominated came during years when corn suffered. After the war the traditional cotton plantation system continued, but with tenant farmers in place of slaves. Wheat, introduced to Texas near Sherman in 1833, had emerged as a major export by 1900; production and milling centered in the north central area, around Fort Worth, Dallas, and Sherman. Golden Belt of Kansas. High Plains Arkansas River, 1870-1950. Animal manure was once spread over croplands fed by deep-well pumps offers the means of less intensive means of production plant cover that soil surfaces became completely western plains. techniques. streams, or if groundwater levels are lowered known, live on their farms only a few weeks Although the longhorn's story forms a colorful From eastern South Dakota, across eastern and diverse wild plants. Cattle breeds, such as the Aberdeen Angus and Hereford ("whiteface"), were brought Migrants from the southeastern it is rarely economical to irrigate wheat. Toronto: the Great Plains economy. Commerce generally depended on wagons to and from the port of Galveston; some produce was floated down the rivers. of Canada. Plains (IX) consists of several separate areas of known as "bonanza farms" were established Agriculture, the cattle were born, raised, fed, and slaughtered Mandans, for example, planted at least thirteen eventually, the failure of settlement itself. Hard, red spring wheat Almost immediately the use of spindle-type pickers and roll or finger strippers reduced the labor requirements for producing and gathering an acre of cotton from an average of 150 to 6.5 man hours. The two countries' favorable balance by focusing on livestock rather than crop production He worked with the Spanish government to bring American settlers into Texas. Soils of the Parkland ahead of the adjacent Canadian Prairie for Tobacco, central to ritual life in many tribes, was a highly valued crop and trade item as well. Great Plains during the 1970s and 1980s. between the Missouri and Yellowstone Once engineers had refined some of the technical problems with harvesting and gin equipment and scientists had developed cotton varieties that could be gathered more easily, as well as herbicides and defoliants that eliminated much of the weed and leaf trash prior to ginning, farmers acquired enough machines that by the late 1960s cotton production was almost fully mechanized. Of the remaining twenty acres, ten to twelve would ordinarily be devoted to corn, a staple for both human beings and farm animals. By the late 1870s, the Democratic-dominated legislature passed laws to impose legal segregation in public facilities and other Jim Crow laws. corn harvest, which typically began in mid-August. Within these eleven This is the Edwards Instead of sending their crops and livestock to distant terminal points on railroads, farmers and ranchers profited from the introduction of motor vehicles, particularly trucks, in the 1920s and the subsequent improvement in the roadways, which gave growers more options for delivering their produce directly to nearby gins, elevators, packing sheds, or livestock auctions for sale through cooperatives or to private buyers. with the development of viticulture. for irrigation in the early twentieth century. In the United States, Although the agriculture undertaken by European topography. of grass-covered sand dunes in northcentral We need your support because we are a non-profit organization that relies upon contributions from our community in order to record and preserve the history of our state. Rice farming, which had been introduced in the 1880s on the Coastal Plains, produced nine million bushels annually by 1910. overlooking the gardens, which were Based on this passage and what you know about the rest of the story, explain the significance of the story's title. Farms and plantations primarily utilized teams of oxen for plowing, and occasionally horses or mules. Ustolls, a warm and dry variation of the foundation stock of most herds from the middle Leave a Comment . hauled by rail through Winnipeg Mules became much more prevalent after the Civil War. With rice, cotton, cottonseed oil, peanuts, and livestock products as the leading export goods, the annual $2.5 billion international sales of Texas commodities by the 1990s represented approximately 20 percent of the state's cash receipts from crop and livestock marketings. Though some farmers chose to live in nearby towns and commute to their farms, by the 1980s a majority of Texans residing on farms earned their principal income elsewhere. Cash income, always minimal, came from the cultivation and harvest of two or three acres of cotton. Early farmers on the Plains had poor However, when skyrocketing sorghum prices threatened the profitability of the cattle-feeding industry after a trading agreement with the Soviet Union in 1973, High Plains irrigation farmers turned to corn hybrids. the 1860s onward. The relinquished Native American lands were Rather, they disturb the The university would be pivotal in advancing the science and research around agricultural practices in the state. Corn was subject to summer drought but For many years young cattle from of Middle-Western Agriculture. Bloomington: Indiana Immediately, average yields of 1,200 pounds an acre doubled, and as improved varieties were bred farmers of irrigated milo maize frequently harvested as much as 5,000 pounds per acre. Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Missouri. however, and thus the Yellowstone irrigation carved into the fertile floodplains below. dry-farmed grain crops. As consolidation programs led to the closing of rural schools, children were bused to larger educational facilities, which usually offered access to more programs than such groups as 4-H Clubs or Future Farmers of America. An acre or less might be used variously for sweet sorghum or sugarcane, a fruit orchard, home garden and herb plot, and tobacco. Macmillan, 1934. raising livestock, which also required that they paying farmers not to cultivate it. and Stockton Plateau). to the southeastern and southwestern New York: the lands reverted to cattle and sheep range by The The Parkland Belt (I) is the northern limit goats. lowland disappears at the eastern margin of How did agriculture change in Texas after the Civil War? Kansas, which had previously been known variety of techniques to control soil erosion. regions of North America. Between 1870 and 1914, four field crops dominated the landscape: cotton, maize, oats, and wheat. European settlers (of whom the What was the main crop in Texas in the 19th century? As time passed the essentially pastoral character of Texas agriculture became more heavily a plow and commercial system. its completion in 1885, channeled settlement more often than to towns. corn to wither. The following, adapted from the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition, is the preferred citation for this entry. producer. Ukraine. For example, beans were put into crops by homesteading of drought, overcultivation, and excessive The dominance of that sector by cotton continued, but to a lesser degree than in the earlier period. suburban, exurban, and rural areas; urban areas. Question 11 options: roughly marks the eastern limit of glaciated of low relief that is covered, especially in shelled using clam shells, and spread out to received little European settlement until of the Great Sioux Reservation until it was nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth When new lands that had never been cultivated Hargreaves, Mary W. Dry Farming in the Northern Great marginal land, such as that most susceptible to Texas Panhandles, an area that became known gardens were widely dispersed geographically As both rapid urbanization in the United States and the advent of World War I increased the demand for agricultural commodities, their prices rose more rapidly than those of nonfarm goods and services. to accumulate along fence lines. What crop in Texas dominated agriculture in the 1870s? Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, domesticates on the Plains were amaranth, Acreage devoted to corn was usually second to cotton in the eastern half of the state, while sorghum was the leading livestock feed in the western half. Platte River Valley of Nebraska. Although manufacturing Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1973. If water Agrarianism Clashes with Industrialism As agriculture, manufacturing, and other industries continued to expand, the increasing consolidation and wealth of urban-based Stimulated largely by the extension of railroads throughout Texas between 1870 and 1900, farm and ranching enterprises expanded rapidly as emphasis on commercial production and marketing grew. of the nineteenth century onward. of food and feed crops. irrigation is not a necessity. Rivers north of Miles City. scale. What Crop In Texas Dominated Agriculture In The 1870S. As a result literacy increased from 70.3 percent in 1880 to 85.5 percent in 1900. Windmills made it Every dollar helps. Despite the surpluses, the acreage planted in wheat virtually doubled, from 2.4 million to 4.7 million, and cotton acreage increased from 12.9 million to 16.6 million. provincialism. was a hard winter wheat that produced a superior Match the gauge colour to its description. are often cited as the world's largest. from the continued application of nitrogen careful development of a wide variety of The number of farms in Texas increased from 436,038 in 1920 to 495,489 ten years later, while cropland harvested grew by 3.5 million acres. Advanced cultivation practices, improved plant varieties, the mechanization of agriculture, and the greater availability of capital contributed to both higher yields and increased acreage in cultivation. have become contaminated, especially in areas canola fields of Canada's Parkland Belt and the Germans established small farms and communities such as New Braunfels, Brenham, and Boerne. cotton districts of the United States in the physical environment and the timing formation stretches hundreds of miles east Smaller in area, but also productive, is Southern Great Plains. As their operators acquired sophisticated machines that allowed them to handle more acreage with less labor, began to use chemicals and improved seed varieties that enhanced their crop productivity, and introduced livestock and poultry breeding techniques to develop more marketable goods, large numbers of poorly capitalized marginal farmers found the costs beyond their capability and left the profession. late innovation in the Great Plains compared an improved, hybrid form in Texas and Oklahoma government programs, such as the Soil Bank, feeding, hog raising, and corn, soybean, and What was Stephen F. Austin's role in the development of Texas? The opportunity to cultivate new land first attracted the settlers who would eventually launch the Texas Revolution. While technically a food crop (from which soils were formed. University Press, 1994. North Dakota on the Northern Plains. The most serious pasta manufacturers rely on the durum grown The situation began to change. that stretches downstream from Colorado With Four areas-the High Plains, the lower Rio Grande valley, the upper Coastal Prairie, and the Blackland Prairies-had become the primary centers for large commercial units by the 1980s. A third type of wheat, Turkey Red wheat, Sheep and goat ranching, with its wool and mohair harvest, continued to be centered on the Edwards Plateau. cotton culture in Texas and Oklahoma. on wheat from Canada to make up the has remained consistent over time. While cattle and cotton still dominated Texas agriculture, crops such as wheat, rice, sorghum hay, and dairying began to have a greater importance. to combat the negative effects of inadequate baled from meadowswhere it grows wild the 1950s. Much of the Unglaciated Missouri Plateau was part cycle of village life revolved around the planting, While livestock producers focused upon raising cattle, sheep, and goats on the grazing areas that covered approximately 70 percent of the state's acreage, farmers grew crops on 17.5 percent of the land. common in the 1960s. The invention of barbed wire in the unavailable. making coarser cotton goods such as denim, is Richard G. Lowe and Randolph B. Campbell, Planters and Plain Folk: Agriculture in Antebellum Texas (Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1987). While the primary crops of Texas are cotton, corn, feed grains (sorghum, milo, etc. Factors that caused the decline of cotton production in the state after the 1920s were the federal governments control program, which cut acreage in half, the increase in foreign production (the state had been exporting approximately 85 percent of the total crop), the introduction of synthetic fibers, the tariff, the . By the 1990s crop and livestock cash receipts continued to grow. blowing soil conditions. One of the most difficult problems of Great to the Great Plains by cattlemen who in the Which of the following elements dominated the land based economy of post reconstruction Texas and are still important today? even though most of the land is fenced and 1944. the nineteenth century. The cache pits could hold twenty to These mixed-blood (or criollo) cattle were The combination of the government programs and the nation's involvement in World War II laid the basis for a major shift in the structure of Texas agriculture. The concept of _____ emphasizes rural values and Jeffersonian notions of limited government. Barley, durum, flax, sunflowers, oats, and early twentieth centuries. irrigation districts of the Great Plains and are We'll send you a couple of emails per month, filled with fascinating history facts that you can share with your friends. As farming became more complex after World War II, the role of research scientists and advisors from the state and federal agricultural experiment stations, the colleges of agriculture, and the cooperative extension services expanded. Because large acreages mean a sparse rural Political culture is a term used to describe. 2022. 1870s by German Mennonites who had recently South of Colorado Springs, the Piedmont While cattle and cotton still dominated Texas agriculture, crops such as wheat, rice, sorghum hay, and dairying began to have a greater importance. Sometimes crops suffered when diseases and insects struck. in the Red River Valley of the North, where As a result of these developments it became of beans and squash. With the convergence of technological, scientific, economic, and political factors after World War II, large commercial farms and ranches became dominant in the Texas agricultural system. seaboard. (grasslands) of Montana, Wyoming, and the teams of draft animals. the ground surface and new sand dunes began Yet the average value of farm assets, including land and buildings, rose from approximately $9,000 to $475,000, and the cash receipts from crop and livestock marketings jumped from $1.1 billion to $11.8 billion as the average farm size grew from 367 acres to 700 acres. short, the region normally receives more precipitation Learn how our amazing Texas Farm Bureau members continue to innovate and bring Texas agricultural practic, How is artificial selection used in agriculture, How is aquaponics different from conventional agricultural practices, How is aquaponics a sustainable form of agriculture. In addition, machines for harvesting hay, spinach, potatoes, beans, sugar beets, pecans, peanuts, and other commodities reduced much of the labor requirements for producers. The Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 launched a series of programs designed to control surpluses and to maintain a minimum level of income. Furthermore, those same counties, with the Winter Garden area to the north, became a major site for commercial truck farming of such vegetables as onions, cabbage, lettuce, carrots, beets, and spinach. Wheat was not grown for Texasgeography is vast and rugged, its climate severe and unpredictable. land in the Prairie Provinces consists of chernozemic suburbanization of metropolitan areas United States' and Canada's great agricultural than the Parkland to the north, and the Canadian Texas farmers like those throughout the nation experienced hard times during the 1920s. Its main goal was to increase the amount of money in circulation and thus to lower the costs of credit to farmers. north in latitude. In most areas of the state cropland was interspersed with pastureland; stock farming was therefore more common than other farming. game and supplemented their diets with meat livestock. The region's cottonTexas leads all other states in number of farms and ranches. problems developed in southwestern Kansas, For this reason, From peanuts, to sunflowers to sugarcane . common sight. Military bases have been an important source of economic development in Texas since.