A revolution down on the farm the transformation of american agriculture since 1929

A REVOLUTION DOWN ON THE FARM The Transformation of American Agriculture since 1929 PAUL K CONKIN THE UNIVERSITY PRESS OF KENTUCKY Copyright © 2008 by Paul K Conkin Published by the University Press of Kentucky Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth, serving Bellarmine University, Berea College, Centre College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University, The Filson Historical Society, Georgetown College, Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State University, Morehead State University, Murray State University, Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University, University of Kentucky, University of Louisville, and Western Kentucky University All rights reserved Editorial and Sales Offices: The University Press of Kentucky 663 South Limestone Street, Lexington, Kentucky 40508-4008 www.kentuckypress.com 12 11 10 09 08 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Conkin, Paul Keith A revolution down on the farm : the transformation of American agriculture since 1929 / by Paul K Conkin p cm Includes bibliographical references and index ISBN 978-0-8131-2519-0 (hardcover : alk paper) Agriculture—United States—History Agriculture and state—United States— History Agricultural productivity—United States—History Agricultural innovations—United States—History I Title II Title: Transformation of American agriculture since 1929 S441.C725 2008 630.973'0904—dc22 2008016831 This book is printed on acid-free recycled paper meeting the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence in Paper for Printed Library Materials Manufactured in the United States of America Member of the Association of American University Presses Contents List of Illustrations Preface Acknowledgments American Agriculture before 1930 Commercial Origins Tilling and Preparing the Soil Tools for Planting and Cultivating Tools of Harvest The Tractor Research, Education, and Extension Credit and Marketing The Traditional Family Farm: A Personal Account Profile of a Farming Village Home Provenance Household Patterns A New Deal for Agriculture, 1930-1938 First Fruits: Hoover's Farm Board Maturing a New Farm Program The Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 Other New Deal Farm Programs Soil Conservation and the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938 World War II and Its Aftermath: A Family Report Wartime Changes in My Village Postwar Transformations Successful Farming in Pennsylvania Dimensions of an Agricultural Revolution The Great New Machines Electrification Chemical Inputs Plant and Animal Breeding Surpluses and Payments: Federal Agricultural Policy, 1954–2008 Production Controls and Price Supports Farm Policy in the Truman and Eisenhower Administrations Managing Surpluses during a Productivity Revolution The Farm Crisis of the 1980S International Agreements and the Federal Agricultural Improvement and Reform Act The 2002 Farm Bill and Beyond Noncommodity Programs Farming in the Twenty-first Century: Status and Challenges Profile of Contemporary Farms Farm Labor Farm Income Critics and Criticisms Agriculture and the Environment Alternatives Lonely Farmers Alternatives in Land Tenure Agrarian Reform Alternative or Sustainable Agriculture Federal Support of Sustainable Agriculture Certified Organic Farming Afterword Notes Index Illustrations Figures Exact replica of Cyrus McCormick's 1831 reaper Five Holt Hillside combines Restored Rumely Oil Pull steam tractor powering a threshing machine Hart-Parr No 3, the first commercial tractor 1918 Fordson, the first mass-produced tractor 1928 Farmall with attached two-row cultivator Bethesda Elementary School, September 1936 Contemporary John Deere combine with small-grain head John Deere combine with corn head Old Red, a 1943 International Harvester cotton picker Value of crops sold: 2002 Value of livestock, poultry, and their products sold: 2002 Percent of farms and market value of agricultural products sold: 2002 Tables Historical highlights: 2002 and earlier census years Market value of agricultural products sold: 2002 and 1997 Preface When this book reaches an audience, I will be almost eighty years old I was born in late October 1929, at the time of the stock market crash on Wall Street My parents were scarcely aware of these events or of their significance What they remembered was the first major frost of the year, which whitened the farm fields around the small, three-room cabin where I was born My first opaque memory is of being led, probably by my father, down into the meadow, where I was greeted by neighbors who were helping to cut our tobacco Because of the location of the crop (we rotated it every year), I later determined that this was September 1932, just before my third birthday It is appropriate that tobacco made such an early imprint on my memory, for it was our chief crop Because it was a crop that required various tasks throughout the year, the cycles of work on tobacco were an important marker of the passing of time: gathering and then burning brush to sterilize beds for the plants; transplanting, cultivating, worming, topping, and suckering; cutting and hanging in the barn; stripping and grading the leaves; and finally the payoff—auction sales in December Until I was seventeen and in my final year of high school, I had assumed that I would make my career in agriculture Four years of classes in vocational agriculture had idealized farming But by my graduation after World War II, agriculture had begun a rapid transformation It was clear that, at best, only a few local farmers could make a living on the rather hilly farms in our part of east Tennessee Two of my teachers persuaded me to attend college (I was the only one to so in my small graduating class of seventeen) Even though I spent my college summers working in the tobacco control program in my county, I knew by then that my career would be in education, not agriculture Our small family farm survives I now own it I rent it to a neighbor for pasture and hay It has been at least twenty years since anyone has grown cultivated crops, and even then it was less than an acre of land rented out for tobacco In what may be, because of age or health, my last book, I decided to go back to my beginnings, to the inescapable landscapes of youth, to go home again My goal is to describe and explain the changes that have taken place in agriculture during my lifetime, to chart the distance traveled from what I experienced firsthand as a boy Also, I want to clarify a complex story—the evolution of federal farm programs in that eighty-year span, for such policies provided the context for a revolution in agricultural productivity It is also at the policy level that all American citizens are involved with agriculture, for it is their representatives in Congress who develop such policies Recently I challenged a former student who referred to the decline of agriculture in America What could she mean by such a statement? It implies that something has gone wrong in the most critical sector of any economy Certainly, from many perspectives, much has gone wrong But as I hope to demonstrate in this book, agriculture has been the most successful sector in the recent economic history of the United States The greatest industrial revolution in our history has occurred, with all its economic benefits and human costs, down on the farm, where productivity per full-time worker has increased at least tenfold since 1950 This is a book based on memory as well as research On one hand, I could not achieve my purposes without my own personal memories of growing up on a farm and my continued, if distant, involvement with what happened on that family farm Throughout this book I rely on my past experience of farming and on my knowledge of the types of farming conducted by neighbors in our small community On the other hand, I could not make sense of all those memories and experiences, place them in a broader context, or grasp their significance without having access to an enormous range of data, largely collected by the U.S Department of Agriculture, and its subsequent analysis by economists and historians Agriculture, or at least the aspects of it devoted to the production of food, is the most basic of all human activities Today, those who till the soil or tend livestock feed a world population of about 6.5 billion Even fifty years ago the earth could not feed nearly so many people And in fact, around 800 million hungry people are not well fed today In another fifty years those who farm will have to feed an additional billion They will probably be able to so, largely because of cumulative changes that occurred in my lifetime What is sad, though, is that with each passing year, fewer and fewer local families can make a decent living on the farm Today, my village is a far-out suburb of Kingsport, Greeneville, and Johnson City Almost every adult has off-farm employment of some type In 1959 my sister married her high school sweetheart, whose family had moved from Tennessee to a dairy farm in York County, Pennsylvania In this rich agricultural area, their farm managed to make all the needed adjustments to compete successfully My brother-in-law remained a fulltime farm operator until his death in 1994 During those years he bought a neighboring farm and increased his acreage to 400, making his farm one of the largest in the area In later years even this was not enough land, so he rented more from his neighbors He was able to upgrade his dairy farm to meet all the requirements of both the Philadelphia and New York marketing districts and managed to buy all the newest equipment, including several tractors and a self-propelled combine for both corn and small grains In other words, he was a moderately successful commercial farmer I thus use his experiences to illustrate some of the strategies that transformed American agriculture and reduced the number of American farm operators needed to produce 89 percent of our agricultural output from around million in the 1930s to less than 350,000 today Acknowledgments In writing this book, I drew on the knowledge of family members and friends, particularly my sister, Lois Conkin Hunt Unlike in earlier books, I was not able to draw information and valuable criticism from students in my history courses, since I have retired from teaching But I was honored to teach a brief, one-week course during the summer of 2007 in the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Vanderbilt Most of the students were retired and old enough to have memories that stretch back to the Great Depression They showed an intense interest in agriculture, offered helpful comments on my developing book, and asked questions that helped me better organize the chapters I thank them A friend with an extensive knowledge of agriculture, Thomas Bianconi, read the manuscript and offered several helpful comments Above all, I want to acknowledge with gratitude an outside reader, the late Bruce L Gardner of the University of Maryland, who read the developing manuscript twice and offered hundreds of useful criticisms Thanks to the Vanderbilt University Library, I have a wonderful library study From the nearby library stacks or from our Interlibrary Loan service, I gained most of my research materials No one could enjoy a more congenial work environment My illustrations reflect the generosity of several people Pete Daniel, a curator in the National Museum of American History at the Smithsonian, a past student of mine, and a leading agricultural and southern historian, helped find four of the photographs from the museum's collection, including that of an original Hart-Parr tractor Sherry Shaefer, who publishes the Oliver Heritage magazine, helped in the restoration of this Hart-Parr and made the excellent photograph included in this book Harold Sohner created one of the replicas of the original McCormick reaper and generously provided the photograph for this book This replica is in the Frontier Culture Museum in Staunton, Virginia The excellent photographs of early Fordson and Farmall tractors are from the South Dakota State Agriculture Heritage Museum in Brookings, South Dakota Dawn Stephens, curator of photographs, helped locate the best possible photographs and provided them free of cost The John Deere Company provided two photographs of very large John Deere combines As I wrote this book, I kept thinking of two pioneers in the field of agricultural history, a field that I have just invaded We are all indebted to them for their lifelong work One was a public historian, the late Wayne Rasmussen, who long headed the agricultural history section in the Department of Agriculture The other, an academic historian, is Gilbert Fite, who knows more about farming than anyone I have ever known American Agriculture before 1930 From the beginning, English settlers along the Atlantic coast tried to find products that they could sell back in Britain Many of these products involved the harvest of abundant forests or the purchase of furs from Indians But very quickly the first colonists in Virginia found an exportable crop that was in great demand in Europe: tobacco It was the first commodity, or money crop, for the new colony It set a pattern American agriculture from the beginning depended on markets It was commercial COMMERCIAL ORIGINS Despite their commercial endeavors, most of what these early American farmers grew supplied local needs Some refer to this as subsistence agriculture, but the label is misleading if it suggests that farmers, even in those first decades in America, supplied all their needs They bought or traded for many items, including tools, housewares, exotic foods, and even some clothing and furniture Native Americans had long exchanged agricultural goods for manufactured items, some procured from a considerable distance English colonists in North America simply adopted the same farming methods they knew from back home They used the same draft animals and the same types of hoes and plows, and they planted the seeds they had brought with them to the New World At first, they took advantage of the open land already cleared by the natives Soon they added new land by clearing forests They learned a few tricks from their Indian neighbors and adopted Indian maize as the dominant cereal—more important than wheat, oats, barley, or rye in most regions of America Unlike in Europe, land was plentiful, although it took hard work to get forestland ready for cultivation Rents were low to nonexistent It was labor that was expensive Thus, American farmers sought laborsaving innovations, not the means to extract more production from each acre of land In a sense, they were reckless in their clearing of trees and in risking both soil erosion and soil exhaustion Like the Native Americans before them, they simply moved their crops to new ground when yields on older fields declined Unlike the Indians, the English settlers adopted a fee-simple type of tenure, not an open commons Up through the nineteenth century, most American farms had more land than any one family could cultivate, even with many working children or one or two expensive hired hands Only in the South, with its tobacco, coastal rice, and cotton crops, did Americans acquire a servile labor force that allowed the cultivation of large plantations—a pattern Europeans had earlier adopted in the Caribbean Through the early nineteenth century, Americans could best compete in world markets by selling farm and forest products as they grew or cut them at the first level of processing (such as ginned cotton, flour, or lumber) Quite simply, they were able to produce such goods at the lowest possible prices This involved not only a surplus of good land but also acquired skills and, gradually, the Notes American Agriculture before 1930 For most estimates about agricultural growth, I relied on the excellent book by Bruce L Gardner, American Agriculture in the Twentieth Century: How It Flourished and What It Cost (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002) U.S Department of Agriculture, National Agricultural Statistics Service, 2002 Census of Agriculture, vol 1, ch 1, U.S National Data, tables and In Sowing Modernity: America's First Agricultural Revolution (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1997), Peter D McClelland both describes and illustrates the major farm tools used before the Civil War R Douglas Hurt provides an equally vivid record in American Farm Tools, from Hand Power to Steam Power (Manhattan, Kans.: Sunflower University Press, 1982) All the tools I mention, before the modern tractor, are illustrated in these two books The complex story of harvesting and threshing equipment for small grains is well told and illustrated in Graeme Quick and Wesley Buchele, The Grain Harvesters (St Joseph, Mo.: American Society of Agricultural Engineers, 1978) For the special conditions in the hilly areas of Washington and Oregon and for great photographs, see Kirby Brumfield, This Was Wheat Farming: A Pictorial History of the Farms and Farmers of the Northwest Who Grew the Nation's Bread (Seattle: Superior Publishing Company, 1968) Old tractors are now collector's items, with numerous guides to the various types and makes For my summary I relied largely on Robert C Williams, Fordson, Farmall, and Poppin Johnny: A History of the Farm Tractor and Its Impact on America (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987) Gladys L Baker, Wayne D Rasmussen, Vivian Wiser, and Jane M Porter, Century of Service: The First Hundred Years of the United States Department of Agriculture (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1963); R Grant Seals, “The Formation of Agricultural and Rural Development with Emphasis on African-Americans II The Hatch-George and Smith-Lever Acts,” Agricultural History 65 (spring 1991): 12–34; Jane M Porter, “Experiment Stations in the South, 1877–1940,” Agricultural History 53 (January 1979): 84–101; Lou Ferleger, “Uplifting American Agriculture: Experiment Station Scientists and the Office of Experiment Stations,” Agricultural History 64 (spring 1990): 5–23 Jeffrey W Moss and Cynthia B Lass, “A History of Farmers’ Institutes,” Agricultural History 62 (spring 1988): 150–63 Roy V Scott, The Reluctant Farmer: The Rise of Agricultural Extension to 1914 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1970) Wayne Rasmussen, Taking the University to the People:Seventy-five Years of Cooperative Extension (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1989) 10 The National Vocational Education (Smith-Hughes) Act, Public Law No 347, Sixty-fourth Congress, S-703 (1917) 11 William D Rowley, The Bureau of Reclamation: Origins and Growth to 1945 (Washington, D.C.: Bureau of Reclamation, 2006) 12 The best analysis of the Federal Farm Loan Act that I have read was almost contemporaneous with the bill: C W Thompson, “The Federal Farm Loan Act,” The American Economic Review, Supplement, Papers and Proceedings of the Twenty-ninth Annual Meeting of the American Economics Association (March 1917): 115–31 13 John Mark Hansen, Gaining Access: Congress and the Farm Lobby, 1919–1981 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991) 14 Gilbert C Fite, George N Peek and the Fight for Farm Parity (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1954) 15 Wayne Rasmussen, Farmers, Cooperatives, and USDA: A History of Agricultural Cooperative Service, Agricultural Information Bulletin 621 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1991) 16 Joan Hoff Wilson, “Hoover's Agricultural Policies, 1921–1928,” Agricultural History 51 (January 1977): 335–61; David E Hamilton, From New Day to New Deal: American Farm Policy from Hoover to Roosevelt, 1928–1933 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991) A New Deal for Agriculture, 1930–1938 The most detailed history of the Farm Board is in David E Hamilton, From New Day to New Deal: American Farm Policy from Hoover to Roosevelt, 1928–1933 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991) A good overview is in Gilbert C Fite, George N Peek and the Fight for Farm Parity (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1954), 221–42 A brief history of the effort to gain a domestic allotment plan is in Theodore Saloutos, The American Farmer and the New Deal (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1982), 34–49 The most detailed and thoughtful account is in Richard S Kirkendall, Social Scientists and Farm Politics in the Age of Roosevelt (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1966), 11–60 Also see Van L Perkins, Crisis in Agriculture: The Agricultural Adjustment Administration and the New Deal (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), 36–78 Almost all books and articles on the Agricultural Adjustment Act stress the domestic allotment scheme and slight the many other strategies in this omnibus bill Perkins, Crisis in Agriculture, at least lists the other provisions, as does Murray R Benedict, Farm Policies of the United States, 1790–1950 (New York: Twentieth Century Fund, 1953) The most detailed account of such marketing agreements is in Perkins, Crisis in Agriculture, 148–67 C Roger Lambert, “Want and Plenty: The Federal Surplus Relief Corporation and the AAA,” Agricultural History 46 (July 1972): 390–400; Benedict, Farm Policies of the United States, 380– 81 Bruce L Gardner, American Agriculture in the Twentieth Century: How It Flourished and What It Cost (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002), 217–19 Kirkendall, Social Scientists, 75–83 Ibid., 165–217; Jess Gilbert, “Democratic Planning in Agricultural Policy: The Federal-County Land-Use Planning Program,” Agricultural History 70 (spring 1996): 233–50 I explain these programs in my first book, Paul K Conkin, Tomorrow a New World: The New Deal Community Programs (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1959), 131–85 10 Vernon W Ruttan, “The TVA and Regional Development,” in TVA: Fifty Years of GrassRoots Bureaucracy, ed Erwin C Hargrove and Paul K Conkin (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1983), 150–63 11 Sandra S Batie, “Soil Conservation in the 1980s: A Historical Perspective,” Agricultural History 59 (April 1985): 107–23 12 Benedict, Farm Policies of the United States, 350–52 13 Ibid., 375–78, 381–83 14 This conclusion derives from the arguments of economist D Gale Johnson, who concludes that artificially higher prices would provide only short-term income increases for farmers, since competition in an increasingly integrated labor and capital market would soon lower net incomes to levels comparable to those in other sectors See D Gale Johnson, “The Performance of Past Policies: A Critique,” in Alternative Agricultural and Food Policies, ed Gordon C Rausser and Kenneth R Farrell (Washington, D.C.: Giannini Foundation of Agricultural Economics, University of California, 1985), 11–36 Dimensions of an Agricultural Revolution Bruce L Gardner, American Agriculture in the Twentieth Century: How It Flourished and What It Cost (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002), 28–47; Sally H Clark, Regulation and the Revolution in United States Farm Productivity (New York: Cambridge University Press), 3–6 U.S Department of Agriculture, National Agricultural Statistics Service, 2002 Census of Agriculture, vol 1, ch 1, U.S National Level Data, table 57 (Summary by Combined Government Payments and Market Value of Agricultural Products Sold, 2002) Gardner, American Agriculture, 15–18 2002 Census of Agriculture, table 55 (Summary by Size of Farm: 2002) For a well-illustrated history of grain harvesting machines, see Graeme Quick and Wesley Buchele, The Grain Harvesters (St Joseph, Mo.: American Society of Agricultural Engineers, 1978) Gilbert C Fite, “Mechanization of Cotton Production since World War II,” Agricultural History 54 (January 1980): 190–207 2002 Census of Agriculture, table 53 (Women Principal Operators—Selected Farm Characteristics: 2002 and 1997) and table 55 Donald Holley, The Second Great Emancipation: The Mechanical Cotton Picker, Black Migration, and How They Shaped the Modern South (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2000), offers the more ironic view, while Pete Daniel presents the dark side of mechanization in Breaking the Land: The Transformation of Cotton, Tobacco, and Rice Cultures since 1880 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1985), 155–83, 239–55 Alan I Marcus, “Setting the Standard: Fertilizers, State Chemistry, and Early National Commercial Regulation, 1880–1887,” Agricultural History 61 (winter 1987): 47–73 10 Richard C Sheridan, “Chemical Fertilizers in Southern Agriculture,” Agricultural History 53 (January 1979): 308–18 11 Vernon W Ruttan, “The TVA and Regional Development,” in TVA: Fifty Years of GrassRoots Bureaucracy, ed Erwin C Hargrove and Paul K Conkin (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1983), 150–63 12 Gardner, American Agriculture, 22–25 13 Gail E Peterson, “The Discovery and Development of 2,4-D,” Agricultural History 41 (July 1967): 243–54 14 Charles E Little, Green Fields Forever: The Conservation Tillage Revolution in America (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1987) 15 Terry G Summons, “Animal Food Additives, 1940–1966,” Agricultural History 42 (October 1968): 305–13 16 If one wants to follow these controversies, the Internet is the best resource, for it contains dozens of references to this ongoing debate 17 Dominic Hogg, Technological Change in Agriculture: Locking in to Genetic Uniformity (London: Macmillan Press, 2000), 145–74 Surpluses and Payments, 1954–2008 The most complete history of the Brannan Plan is by Virgil W Dean, An Opportunity Lost: The Truman Administration and the Farm Policy Debate (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2006) For the Soil Bank and all the commodity programs from 1954 to 1973, the most definitive and informed account is by a participant in many of the policy debates, Willard W Cochrane See Willard W Cochrane and Mary E Ryan, American Farm Policy, 1948–1973 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1976), 175–255; Gilbert Fite, American Farmers: The New Minority (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1981), 102–19 Ibid.; James M Giglio, “New Frontier Agricultural Policy: The Commodity Side, 1961–1963,” Agricultural History 61 (summer 1987): 36–52 Bruce L Gardner, American Agriculture in the Twentieth Century: How It Flourished and What It Cost (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002), 84–87 Willard W Cochrane and C Ford Runge, Reforming Farm Policy: Toward a National Agenda (Ames: Iowa State University, 1992), 52–53; Ronald D Knutson, J B Penn, and William T Boehm, Agricultural and Food Policy, 3rd ed (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1995), 256–58 Knutson et al., Agricultural and Food Policy, 257–58 Geoffrey S Becker, “Farm Support Programs and World Trade Commitments,” in Farm Economic Issues, ed Denise L Sandrino (New York: Nova Science Publishers, 2004), 55–78 The farm bill of 1996 (Public Law No 104–127) is available at www usda.gov/farmbill1997 I did not read all of this huge bill, but only the sections related to commodity programs The public debates about the bill led to hundreds of articles and much criticism Jasper Womach, “Loans and Loan Deficiency Payments,” in Sandrino, Farm Economic Issues, 183–201 10 Ralph M Chite, “Farm Disaster Assistance,” ibid., 79–86 11 The farm bill of 2002 is available at www.usda.gov/farmbill2002 12 Cochrane and Runge, Reforming Farm Policy, 81–82 13 Knutson, Agricultural and Food Policy, 430–40 Farming in the Twenty-first Century: Status and Challenges U.S Department of Agriculture, National Agricultural Statistics Service, 2002 Census of Agriculture, vol 1, ch 1, U.S National Level Data, table 1, (Historical Highlights: 2002 and Earlier Census Years) Ibid., table 52 (Selected Characteristics by Race); table 61 (Summary by Tenure of Principal Operator and by Operators on Farm) These conclusions reflect an analysis of data in ibid., table 57 (Summary by Combined Government Payments and Market Value of Agricultural Products) Bruce L Gardner, American Agriculture in the Twentieth Century: How It Flourished and What It Cost (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002), 64–66, 107–9 2002 Census of Agriculture, table 52 U.S Department of Agriculture, National Agricultural Statistics Service, “Farm Labor,” May 18, 2007 Gardner, American Agriculture, 87–90 U.S Department of Agriculture, “2007 Farm Income Report,” February 2007 2002 Census of Agriculture, table (Income from Farm-Related Sources: 2002 and 1997) 10 Ibid., table (Economic Class of Farms by Market Value of Agricultural Products Sold and Government Payments) 11 Ibid., table (Net Cash Farm Income of the Operations and Operators) 12 Willard W Cochrane, The Curse of American Agricultural Abundance (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2003) 13 In several books and articles, Pete Daniel has thoroughly documented the plight of African American and small-scale white farmers in the South, beginning with The Shadow of Slavery: Peonage in the South, 1901–1969 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1972) and continuing in Breaking the Land:The Transformation of Cotton, Tobacco, and Rice Cultures since 1880 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1985) 14 Sandra S Batie, “Soil Conservation in the 1980s: A Historical Perspective,” Agricultural History 59 (April 1985): 107–23 15 Luther Tweeten, Farm Policy Analysis (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1989), 261–88 Alternatives Henry C Carey, The Past, the Present, and the Future (reprint, New York: Augustus M Kelley, 1967), 110–12, 128–33; Paul K Conkin, Prophets of Prosperity: America's First Political Economists (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980), 283–85, 290–93 John A Hostetler, Hutterite Society (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974); Paul K Conkin, Two Paths to Utopia: The Hutterites and the Llano Colony (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1964) Conkin, Prophets of Prosperity, 222–59 The best introduction to biodynamic agriculture that I have found is by Herbert H Koepf, Bo D Pettersson, and Wolfgang Schaumann, Bio-Dynamic Agriculture:An Introduction (Spring Valley, N.Y.: Anthroposophic Press, 1976) Sir Albert Howard, The Soil and Health: A Study of Organic Agriculture (New York: DevinAdair, 1947); Sir Albert Howard, “Maintaining Fertility—The Indore Process,” in The Organic Tradition: An Anthology of Writings on Organic Farming, 1900–1950 , ed Philip Conford (Bideford, England: Green Books, 1988), 114–31 As a longtime reader of Organic Gardening, I think I understand what the Rodales accomplished The best scholarly defense of their organic methods is by a successor of Robert Rodale, Richard R Harwood, “The Integrative Efficiencies of Cropping Systems,” in Sustainable Agriculture and Integrated Farming Systems, ed Thomas C Edens, Cynthia Fridgen, and Susan L Battenfield (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1985), 64–75 Edward H Faulkner, Plowman's Folly (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1943) Louis Bromfield, Out of the Earth (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1948) Randel S Beeman and James A Pritchard, A Green and Permanent Land: Ecology and Agriculture in the Twentieth Century (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2001), 123–29 10 Helen Nearing and Scott Nearing, Living the Good Life (Harborside, Me.: Social Science Institute, 1954); Rebecca Kneale Gould, At Home in Nature: Modern Homesteading and Spiritual Practice in America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), xiv–xv, 139–70 11 Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1977) 12 Beeman and Pritchard, A Green and Permanent Land, 131–46; Gary Holthaus, From the Farm to the Table: What All Americans Need to Know About Agriculture (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2006) 13 Holthaus, From the Farm to the Table 14 Jim Hightower and Susan DeMarco, Hard Tomatoes, Hard Times: A Report of the Agribusiness Accountability Project on the Failure of America's Land Grant College Complex (Cambridge, Mass.: Schenkman, 1973), 30 15 Joseph Heckman, “A History of Organic Farming—Transitions from Sir Albert Howard's War in the Soil to the USDA National Organic Program,” Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems 21 (September 2006): 143–50 (formerly American Journal of Alternative Agriculture) 16 National Research Council, Board on Agriculture, Alternative Agriculture (Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1989) 17 Heckman, “History of Organic Farming.” 18 The regulations governing organic certification are available at www.ams.usda.gov/nop/NOP/standards.html This home page will guide you to the Electronic Code of Federal Regulations, Title 7, part 205—National Organic Program This is an enormously complex body of rules, which I have tried to summarize Index The index that appeared in the print version of this title does not match the pages in your eBook Please use the search function on your eReading device to search for terms of interest For your reference, the terms that appear in the print index are listed below AAA radicals acreage controls acreage diversion payments Acreage Reserve Program See also Soil Bank African Americans and agriculture Agent Orange agrarianism Agrarian League Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 section 32 (1935 amendment), and Thomas Amendment, Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938 agricultural extension Agricultural Marketing Act Alabama Allis-Chalmers Alternative Farming Systems Information Center Amana Society American Farm Bureau American Society of Agronomy Amish farms animal breeding animal welfare antibiotics apples Arkansas artificial insemination Austria barbed wire base acres beef cattle Bennett, Hugh H Bergland, Robert Berry, Wendell Bethesda community Bianconi, Thomas binder biodynamic agriculture bioregionalism black farmers See African Americans and agriculture boll weevil Borlaug, Norman Brannan, Charles Bromfield, Louis Bureau of Agricultural Economics Bureau of Reclamation burley tobacco See also tobacco Bush, George W Butler case Butz, Earl California: confinement dairy farms in cotton harvest in fruits and vegetables in as leading farm state organic farming in wheat harvest in Capper-Volstead Act Carey, Henry C Carson, Rachel Case farm machinery Caterpillar Company Catholic Rural Life Conference cattle: breeds of in confinement dairying and government programs for home dairy needs and manure disposal for marketing steroid and hormone use in See also beef cattle cellulosic ethanol Central Bank for Cooperatives check-row planters chemicals in antibiotics and hormones in fertilizers in herbicides in insecticides and fungicides chickens See poultry Child Nutrition Act Chile Civil Rights Act of 1964 Clinton, William (Bill) Cochrane, Willard colony collapse disorder combine commercial farmers Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) commodity loans See crop loans commodity programs communal agriculture community-based agriculture compost confinement dairying conservation in conservation reserves in New Deal in 1985 farm bill present program for Conservation Reserve Conservation Security Program Coolidge, Calvin Cooperative Extension Service cooperative marketing Cooperative Marketing Act cooperatives corn: in commodity programs in early America effect of herbicides on in ethanol production for home use hybrid varieties of as livestock feed marketing policies for in New Deal programs pests of productivity rates techniques for growing techniques of harvest corporate farms cotton picker Cotton Stabilization Corporation counter-cyclical payments cover crops cows See cattle cradle for wheat harvest crop insurance crop lien system crop loans crop profile crop yields per acre cultivating cultivators cutter bar dairy prices Daniel, Pete DDT Deere, John See also John Deere Company Deering Company deficiency payments Delaware demonstration farms Denmark Department of Agriculture: credit services in food aid programs in founding New Deal programs research role rural development programs statistical data compiled by support for alternative farming Department of Commerce Depression See Great Depression direct payments to farmers disaster relief dispersed farmsteads Division of Agricultural Cooperation Division of Cooperative Marketing domestic allotment system drill for grain See grain drill Eastman Kodak East Tennessee State Teachers College Ecological Farming Association Egypt Eisenhower, Dwight D electrification Emergency Farm Mortgage Act emergency market loss payments Emerson, Ralph Waldo environmental challenges in agriculture Environmental Quality Incentive Program ethanol European Union Evans, George Henry “ever normal granary,” experiment stations export subsidies Extension Service See Cooperative Extension Service Ezekiel, Mordecai family farm, images of Farmall tractors Farm Bill of 2002 Farm Bill of 2007 farm bloc Farm Board Farm Bureau farm census (2002) farm credit Farm Credit Act of Farm Credit Administration farm electrification farmers, profile of Farmers’ Home Administration farmers’ markets farm income farm income distribution farm loan associations farm numbers farm productivity Farm Security Administration Farm Service Agency farm size farm tenancy farm wage laborers farmworkers, status of Faulkner, Edward H Federal Agricultural Improvement and Reform Act (FAIR) Federal Board for Vocational Education Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) Federal Reclamation Act Federal Reserve System Federal Surplus Commodities Corporation Federal Surplus Relief Corporation fee simple ownership fertilizer firewood Florida flour food aid Food for Peace program food quality food rationing food safety Food Security Program Food Stamp Act food stamps food taste Ford-Ferguson tractor Fordson tractor 4-H clubs free-market theory free-range chickens free silver full-factor economic growth fungicides Future Farmers of America (FFA) gardens See also vegetable gardens Gardner, Bruce L General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) General Education Board genetically modified crops George, Henry Georgia global positioning system (GPS) global warming goats grain drill Grain Stabilization Corporation Grand Coulee dam Grange Grant, Ulysses S Grape Control Board grapes grass-fed beef Great Depression greenhouse gases green revolution Haber, Fritz Hampton Institute Hard Tomatoes, Hard Times (Hightower) harrowing Hart-Parr tractors Hatch Act hay header for grain harvest Henry A Wallace Institute for Alternative Agriculture herbicides Hightower, Jim hobby farming hogs: antibiotics in confined in cages for home subsistence in the New Deal domestic allotment system in organic agriculture support prices for Holley, Donald Homestead Act Hoover, Herbert hormones horses household incomes Howard, Albert Hunt, John Hunt, Lois Conkin hunting Hutterites hybrid corn hybridization Illinois India Indore process insecticides Institute for Alternative Agriculture Intermediate Credit Banks International Harvester Company Interstate Commerce Act Iowa irrigation Jackson, Wes Japan Jefferson, Thomas John Deere Company Johnson, D Gale Jones, Donald Kansas Kentucky Knapp, Seaman A Korean War labor productivity Land Institute Land Policy Section land purchase programs land retirement See also Soil Bank; Conservation Reserve land-use planning Legge, Alexander lime Lincoln, Abraham loan deficiency payments loan rates Long, Huey Louisiana low-till cultivation lumber Maine manure disposal marketing agreements marketing contracts marketing orders market loan payment Marshall Plan Massey-Harris Company Maytag washers McNary-Haugen bills Meat Inspection Act mechanical cotton picker Mennonite Institute for Sustainable Agriculture Mennonites migratory workers Minneapolis Moline Company Minnesota Mississippi monetary inflation monetary policy Monsanto Company Morrill, Justin Smith Morrill Act mules Muscle Shoals project National Agricultural Research Center National Agricultural Statistics Service National Agriculture Library National Farmers Union National Fertilizer Development Center National Industrial Recovery Act National Museum of American History National Recovery Administration National Reform Association National Research Council National School Lunch Act Natural Resources Conservation Service Native Americans Nearing, Helen Nearing, Scott Nebraska Negro Extension Service Netherlands net income from farming Newlands Act New Zealand nitrate fertilizer nonrecourse loans North Carolina no-till cultivation Office of Experiment Stations Ogallala aquifer oil Oklahoma Oliver Company orchards organic farming Organic Gardening magazine organic standards Osher Lifelong Learning Institute Paine, Thomas Palouse hills Patton, James G payment limits in agricultural programs peaches Peek, George N Pennsylvania Peru planting tools plows and plowing potash potatoes poultry: antibiotics in feed for decline on farms free-range revolutionary changes in growing and processing on traditional farms price controls price stabilization processing tax production controls productivity growth in agriculture Progressive Farmer magazine Public Law (PL) Public Works Administration quilting racial issues and farm policy See also African Americans and agriculture Rasmussen, Wayne reaper recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH) Reconstruction Finance Corporation relief and rehabilitation programs Resettlement Administration rice ridge-type cultivation Rockefeller, John D Rodale, Jerome I Rodale, Richard Rodale Press Rodale Research Center Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Theodore rural development programs Rural Electrification Administration rural health care Rural Rehabilitation Corporations Russia scythe section See Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 seed loans self-propelled combine Shaefer, Sherry Shakers sharecroppers sheep Silent Spring (Carson) single-tax system Skidmore, Thomas slavery Smith-Hughes Act Smith-Lever Act socialized agriculture Sohner, Harold Soil Bank Soil Conservation Act of 1935 Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act of 1935 Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act of 1936 Soil Conservation Service soil depletion Soil Erosion Service soil preparation sorghum sorghum syrup South: agricultural growth after 1950 agricultural maladies after the Civil War depression problems in early farming in environmental problems in industrializing patterns in migration of farm labor from and Morrill Act and the New Deal role of African American farmers in South Carolina South Dakota State Agricultural Museum soybeans Spence, Thomas stabilization corporations Steagall amendment steam traction Steiner, Rudolf steroids stock market crash (1929) subsistence homesteads superphosphates Supreme Court Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program sweet potatoes Switzerland tariff laws Teague, Charles Tennessee Tennessee Eastman Corporation Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) Texas Thomas Amendment See Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 Thompson, Richard threshing threshing machine tobacco: acreage controls for chemicals used in colonial South contract farming of cultivating of decline of market for in East Tennessee harvesting of Todd, John tomatoes tractors: improvements after World War I invention and early uses maturation after World War II role in the wheat belt Trade Development and Assistance Act Truman, Harry S Tugwell, Rexford G Tuskegee Institute Uruguay Round Vanderbilt University Library vegetable gardens Vermont village-based farming Virginia Wallace, Henry A See also Henry A Wallace Institute for Alternative Agriculture Wallace, Henry C water pollution wheat: depression woes for diseases of in early America on family farms harvesting methods for marketing of in New Deal programs planting of postwar production controls for productive efficiency in shortages of in 2008 wild foods Wilson, Milburn L Wilson Dam winnowing Wisconsin Women, Infants, and Children Program (WIC) women as farm operators women's work on traditional farms Working Men's Party world hunger world population World Trade Organization (WTO) World War I World War II: farm legislation in impact on farm operations as point of reference ... 10 09 08 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Conkin, Paul Keith A revolution down on the farm : the transformation of American agriculture since 1929 / by Paul K Conkin p cm Includes... vocational agriculture had idealized farming But by my graduation after World War II, agriculture had begun a rapid transformation It was clear that, at best, only a few local farmers could make... for hay, the goal was a mechanical broadcaster The earliest answer was a hand-held and hand-cranked hurricane spreader (I still own and use one of these) Later, farmers attached rotary spreaders