Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-995ml Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-18T00:09:46.141Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Ecological Frontiers on the Grasslands of Kansas: Changes in Farm Scale and Crop Diversity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2009

Kenneth M. Sylvester*
Affiliation:
Assistant Research Scientist, Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, 330 Packard Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48106-1248; and Research Affiliate, Population Studies Center, University of Michigan. E-mail: kenms@umich.edu.

Abstract

Farms stood at an ecological frontier in the 1930s. With new and better agricultural machinery, more farms than ever before made the leap to thousand acre enterprises. But did they abandon mixed husbandry in the process? This article explores the origins of the modern relationship between scale and diversity using a new sample of Kansas farms. In 25 townships across the state, between 1875 and 1940, the evidence demonstrates that relatively few plains farms were agents of early monoculture. Rather than a process driven by single-crop farming, settlement was shaped by farms that grew more diverse with each generation.

Type
ARTICLES
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Allen, Robert C.“The Nitrogen Hypothesis and the English Agricultural Revolution: A Biological Analysis.” This JOURNAL 68 no. 1 (2008) 182–210.Google Scholar
Ankli, Robert H.“Horses vs. Tractors in the Corn Belt.” Agricultural History 54 no. 1 (1980) 134–48.Google Scholar
Atack, Jeremy.“A Nineteenth-Century Resource for Agricultural History Research in the Twenty-First Century.” Agricultural History 78 no. 4 (2004) 389–412.Google Scholar
Beeman, Randal S. and James, A. PritchardA Green and Permanent Land: Ecology and Agriculture in the Twentieth Century. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas 2001Google Scholar
Bogue, Allan G.From Prairie to Cornbelt: Farming on the Illinois and Iowa Prairies in the Nineteenth Century. Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1963Google Scholar
Buchanan, Rex, J. R. McCauley, and Kansas Geological Survey. Roadside Kansas: A Traveler's Guide to Its Geology and Landmarks.Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1987.Google Scholar
Cox, Joseph F. and Lyman, E. JacksonCrop Management and Soil Conservation. New York: John Willey & Sons 1948Google Scholar
Cunfer, Geoff.On the Great Plains: Agriculture and Environment: TexasA&M University Press 2005Google Scholar
Danbom, David B.The Resisted Revolution: Urban America and the Industrialization of Agriculture, 1900-1930. Ames: Iowa State University Press 1979Google Scholar
Donahue, Brian.The Great Meadow: Farmers and the Land in Colonial Concord. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press 2004Google Scholar
Fitzgerald, Deborah Kay.“Accounting for Change: Farmers and the Modernizing State.” In The Countryside in the Age of the Modern State: Political Histories of Rural America edited by Catherine, McNichol Stock and Robert, D. Johnson189–212. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press 2001.Google Scholar
Fitzgerald, Deborah Kay.Every Farm a Factory: The Industrial Ideal in American Agriculture. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press 2003Google Scholar
Gates, Paul Wallace.Fifty Million Acres: Conflicts Over Kansas Land Policy, 1854-1890. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press 1954Google Scholar
Gutmann, Myron P.Great Plains Population and Environment Data: Agricultural Data, 1870-1997 [United States] [Computer file]. ICPSR04254-v1. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan [producer], 2005. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2005-06-22.Google Scholar
Hansen, Zeynep K. and Gary, D. Libecap“The Allocation of Property Rights to Land: U.S. Land Policy and Farm Failure in the Northern Great Plains.” Explorations in Economic History 41 no. 2(2004): 103–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harris, Craig K. and Jess, Gilbert“Large-Scale Farming, Rural Income, and Goldschmidt's Agrarian Thesis.” Rural Sociology 47 no. 3 (1982) 449–58.Google Scholar
Hart, John Fraser.The Changing Scale of American Agriculture. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press 2003Google Scholar
Hirschman, Albert O.“The Paternity of an Index.” American Economic Review 54, no. 5(1964)761.Google Scholar
Hopkins, Cyril George.Soil Fertility and Permanent Agriculture. New York: Ginn 1910.Google Scholar
Hurt, R. Douglas.Problems of Plenty: The American Farmer in the Twentieth Century.The American Ways Series. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee 2002Google Scholar
Kansas. State Board of Agriculture. Statistical Rolls for Agriculture. Census. Manuscripts. Topeka: Kansas State Historical Society, 1875, 1885, 1895, 1905, 1915, 1920, 1925, 1930, 1935, 1940.Google Scholar
Kansas. Decennial Population Census. Manuscripts. Topeka: Kansas State Historical Society, 1875, 1885, 1895, 1905, 1915, 1925.Google Scholar
Libecap, Gary D. and Zeynep, K. Hansen“‘Rain Follows the Plow’ and Dryfarming Doctrine: The Climate Information Problem and Homestead Failure in the Upper Great Plains, 1890-1925.” This JOURNAL 62 no. 1 (2002) 86–120.Google Scholar
Malin, James Claude.Winter Wheat in the Golden Belt of Kansas: A Study in Adaption to Subhumid Geographical Environment. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press 1944Google Scholar
Malin, James Claude.“The Turnover of Farm Population in Kansas.” In History & Ecology: Studies of the Grassland edited by Robert, P. Swierenga276–99Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press 1984.Google Scholar
Matson, P. A.Parton, W. J.Power, A. G. and Swift, M. J.“Agricultural Intensification and Ecosystem Properties.” Science 277 no. 5325 (1997) 504–09.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCusker, John J. and Russell, R. MenardThe Economy of British America, 1607-1789. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press 1985Google Scholar
Miner, H. Craig.Harvesting the High Plains: John Kriss and the Business of Wheat Farming, 1920-1950. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas 1998Google Scholar
Miner, H. Craig.Kansas: The History of the Sunflower State, 1854-2000. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas 2002.Google Scholar
Moschini, Giancarlo and David, A. Hennessy.“Uncertainty, Risk Aversion, and Risk Management for Agricultural Producers.” In Handbook of Agricultural Economics edition 1, volume 1, edited by Gardner, B. L. and Rausser, G. C.88–153Amsterdam: Elsevier 2001.Google Scholar
Olmstead, Alan L. and Paul, Rhode“Reshaping the Landscape: The Impact and Diffusion of the Tractor in American Agriculture, 1910-1960.” This JOURNAL 61 no. 3 (2001) 663–98.Google Scholar
Phillips, Sarah T.This Land, This Nation: Conservation, Rural America, and the New Deal. New York: Cambridge University Press 2007Google Scholar
Rabe-Hesketh, Sophia and Anders, SkrondalMultilevel and Longitudinal Modelling Using Stata. 2nd edition. College Station, TX: Stata Press 2008Google Scholar
Rosenbluth, Gideon.“Measures of Concentration.” In NBER Business Concentration and Price Policy 57–95Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 1955Google Scholar
Sherow, James Earl.The Grasslands of the United States: An Environmental History. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO 2007.Google Scholar
Stata Corp.Stata Longitudinal/Panel-Data Reference Manual: Release 10. College Station, TX: Stata Press Publication 2007Google Scholar
Steinberg, Theodore.Down to Earth: Nature's Role in American History. New York: Oxford University Press 2002CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stock, Catherine McNicol and Robert, D. JohnstonThe Countryside in the Age of the Modern State: Political Histories of Rural America. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press 2001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stoll, Steven.Larding the Lean Earth: Soil and Society in Nineteenth-Century America. New York: Hill and Wang, 2002.Google Scholar
Swierenga, Robert P. ed. History and Ecology: James C. Malin's Studies of the Grassland. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press 1984Google Scholar
Sylvester, Kenneth and Geoff, Cunfer“An Unremembered Diversity: Mixed Husbandry and the American Grasslands.” Agricultural History 93 no. 3 (2009) 352–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sylvester, KennethSusan, H. LeonardMyron, P. Gutmann and Geoff, Cunfer“Demography and Environment in Grassland Settlement: Using Linked Longitudinal and Cross-Sectional Data to Explore Household/Agricultural Systems.” History and Computing 14, nos. 1-2(2006): 31–60.Google Scholar
Tilman, DavidKenneth, G. CassmanPamela, A. MatsonRosamond, Naylor and Stephen, Polasky“Agricultural Sustainability and Intensive Production Practices.” Nature 418 no. 6898 (2002) 671–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
United States. Bureau of the Census. Census of Agriculture. Unpublished Manuscripts. Washington, DC: National Archives, 1880.Google Scholar
United States. Bureau of the Census. Census of Population. Unpublished Manuscripts. Washington, DC: National Archives, 1870, 1880, 1900, 1910, 1920, 1930.Google Scholar
United States. Bureau of the Census, and Foster Floyd Elliott. Types of Farming in the United States, Fifteenth Census of the United States. New York: Hill and Wang, 2002.Google Scholar
Whatley, Warren C.“Institutional Change and Mechanization in the Cotton South: The Tractorization of Cotton Farming.” Ph.D. diss., Stanford University, 1983.Google Scholar
White, William J.“An Unsung Hero: The Farm Tractor's Contribution to Twentieth- Century United States Economic Growth.” Ph.D. diss., Ohio State University, 2000.Google Scholar
Worster, Donald.Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s. New York: Oxford University Press 1979Google Scholar
Young, Arthur.Rural Economy: Or, Essays on the Practical Parts of Husbandry. Dublin: printed for J. Exshaw, H. Saunders, D. Chamberlaine, J. Potts, and W. Sleater, 1770.Google Scholar