xxvi 1750 to 1900 independence between 1808 and 1824, followed by frequent outbreaks of regional civil war, led to crop and livestock destruction and great instability for farmers In the 1830s coffee beans became a wildly successful commodity Coffee enabled many wealthy landowners, especially in Brazil, Venezuela, and Guatemala, to enlarge their holdings at the expense of small farmers, although some small farmers in Costa Rica and Colombia were able to hold their own In Argentina, commercial beef production grew explosively late in the century Similarly, Australia and New Zealand, settled by British immigrants, became major exporters of grain and meat North America became a magnet for agricultural immigrants as land became scarcer in Europe due to population pressures and other political and economic factors Millions of Scandinavian and German farmers headed to the Great Plains, helping to make the United States and Canada the world’s most bountiful source of grains such as wheat and corn Not all rural immigrants found agricultural opportunities: Irish peasants displaced from their lands by harsh British policies and the devastating potato famine of the late 1840s mostly resettled in Canadian and American cities In the 1890s a worldwide decline in sugar prices caused famine in Spanish-controlled Cuba and helped bring about the Spanish-American War In China, even though acreage devoted to agriculture increased after the 17th century, the population rose much faster, tripling to 430 million by 1851, thanks to a period of internal peace, increased crop yields, and medical advances such as widespread smallpox vaccination Since little additional land was available for cultivation and there were few opportunities for emigration, livelihood became difficult, leading to widespread rebellions in the mid-19th century Japan’s population also grew rapidly in the late 19th century, straining limited land resources The adoption of chemical fertilizers somewhat improved agricultural yields Imperialism played an important role in reshaping agricultural economies Subsistence farming in much of Asia, Africa, and South America was disrupted by Western demands for profitable cash crops and a growing need for cheap, nonagricultural labor Egypt under Muhammad Ali moved away from self-sufficient farming of foodstuffs to cash crops, especially tobacco and cotton During the U.S Civil War, when demand was high and production low, the Egyptian economy prospered, but once U.S production resumed, Egypt was caught in a web of indebtedness for costly development projects begun during the short boom In India, the British undertook many irrigation projects, especially after the opening of the Suez Canal These improvements facilitated the cultivation and exportation of various cash crops Famines continued to occur, but agricultural and transportation improvements lessened their severity Over the course of the 19th century, prices of commodity crops such as wheat, corn, tobacco, sugar, and cotton fell significantly This was a boon for consumers, but difficult for small independent farmers Agricultural Mechanization and New Techniques For millennia, agricultural labor had been provided by the muscle power of men, women, and children, assisted when possible by draft animals such as horses, donkeys, oxen, water buffalo, or yaks The number of hands and hoofs available dictated the size of most farms, which were small Most farmers produced food required by their own families, selling any extra production locally for cash to buy what they could not grow or make Two American innovators, John Deere and Cyrus McCormick, introduced important advances in the 1830s that made plows stronger and reapers more reliable At first this new equipment used horse or oxen power; eventually steam power would run these labor-saving machines Although Deere and McCormick became international names in agriculture, farmers were slow to adopt the new machinery, due to expense and tradition As more farmers after the U.S Civil War acquired larger farmsteads on the Great Plains, they found that it was almost impossible to cultivate the prairies without the new technology, including the tougher chilled iron plow, introduced in 1869, and seed drills that promised uniform rows for crops such as wheat and corn The “plow that broke the Plains” would have serious ecological consequences wherever it was used, leading to soil erosion and other long-term effects By the 1880s most North American agriculture was specialized In the arid West, barbed wire was the key invention that helped ranchers control their livestock, keeping cattle and sheep safe from both