Agricultural Revolution

Urban growth is closely connected to agricultural productivity. Nowhere has this been more the case than in the United States, whose most valuable natural resource is its vast expanse of fertile land. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries U.S. agricultural productivity increased not because of changes in methods, mechanization, or the application of scientific techniques to farming, but because of increased inputs of fertile land and labor. The increasing reliance on the labor of slaves, who did not enjoy the legal or customary protections enjoyed by hired labor or indentured servants, was especially important in increasing productivity. Foreign observers generally considered American agriculture lacking in both art and skill. While English farmers applied increasingly sophisticated irrigation, drainage, fertilization, and crop-rotation schemes, American farmers practiced long-fallow agriculture, clearing the land of vegetation and deserting it for a few years, and frequently abandoned degraded lands entirely. Their extensive farms reflected the relative cheapness of land and dearness of labor in America. American farmers became more attentive to the potential benefits of innovation between the Revolutionary War and the Civil War. Mechanization played a crucial role in altering agriculture during this period. The cotton gin, invented by Eli Whitney in 1793, made cotton the most important southern crop and the preeminent American export. The mechanical reaper, developed in the 1830s by Cyrus McCormick, dramatically altered the small grain harvest, and by 1860, 70 percent of wheat was being cut by mechanical reapers. Improved plows, harrows, seed drills, and threshing machines further increased the productivity of farmers who grew wheat and other small grains. Some farmers also became more attentive to improved crops, animal breeds, and agricultural methods during this period. Farmers in long-settled regions used systematic rotational plans and manure management to restore worn-out soils. The first American agricultural scientists, some trained in Germany, the world leader in the study of soil chemistry, also appeared in this period. Among the most prominent were Edmund Ruffin, an advocate of

calcareous manure for acidic soils, and Yale soil chemist Samuel Johnson. Farmers shared agricultural information through farm newspapers, agricultural societies, and county fairs, all of which proliferated after 1815. During the second half of the nineteenth century, the federal government developed and implemented a systematic plan to make agriculture more productive. In 1862 Congress passed the Morrill Land Grant College Act, which provided support for agricultural colleges in each of the states. The Morrill Act was based at least partially on the premise that agriculture was an enterprise demanding the sophistication and scientific knowledge that higher education could provide. Under the 1862 legislation and the Second Morrill Act of 1890, nearly 70 land-grant colleges were established by the states. Also in 1862, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), which had been a part of the Patent Office, achieved independence, but it lacked cabinet status and was headed by a commissioner. The department, which received cabinet status in 1889, quickly became the main repository of scientific expertise in agriculture in the United States. Building on efforts undertaken in a few states, Congress passed the Hatch Act in 1887. This legislation provided $15,000 per year to states to create experiment stations that would conduct scientific research on agricultural problems. None of these endeavors was desired, welcomed, or hardly even noticed by most farmers. Almost no farmers sent their children to land-grant colleges, and the scientific findings of the USDA and the experiment stations went unheeded by most farmers, who scoffed at the impracticality of book farming. Farmers apparent backwardness and resistance to change seemed to many urban observers in the early twentieth century to imperil the country. The population of the United States grew by 40 percent between 1900 and 1920, while agricultural productivity barely increased, with the result that food prices doubled. One reaction to the backwardness of farming was the Country Life Movement, which included among its goals improved rural education and the inculcation of better farming and business techniques. Another reaction was the Smith-Lever Act of 1914, which provided federal matching funds to states to create a network of county extension agents who would carry principles of agricultural science and sound farming practice directly into the countryside.

The first signs of the sweeping agricultural revolution that continues even today can be seen in the 1920s, when agricultural mechanization began in earnest. Between 1920 and 1930, the number of gasoline-powered tractors on American farms nearly quadrupled, from 246,000 to 920,000. While these early tractors could not perform all field operations for all farmers, they did allow those who possessed them to become much more efficient, and they were the main reason one person on a farm could feed 9.8 people in 1930, up dramatically from 8.3 a decade earlier. Greater individual productivity means superfluous population. In the decade of the twenties, 6,250,000 people moved from farms to cities, helping to fuel the economic boom enjoyed by urban America. The 1920s also witnessed the first great triumph of modern plant breeding, with the introduction of hybrid corn, which returned yields that were 20 percent or more higher than open-pollinated varieties. While rural out-migration slowed in the thirties, the trend toward greater agricultural productivity, especially through mechanization, continued. By lavishing benefits on the largest and most productive producers of commodities, New Deal agricultural programs rewarded and encouraged further mechanization. The effects of these programs were especially evident in the cotton-growing South, where the tractors landlords purchased with government crop loans combined with acreage-reduction subsidy payments put sharecroppers off the land. The most dramatic phase of the agricultural revolution took place during World War II and the years immediately following. The mechanization of agriculture continued and accelerated. The number of tractors on American farms increased from 1.45 million in 1940 to 2.35 million five years later as the demand for food increased dramatically. Practical self-propelled combine harvester-threshers for small grains, along with corn and cotton pickers, were either introduced or significantly improved. Rural electrification, initiated with the creation of the Rural Electrification Administration by the federal government in 1935, revolutionized dairy farming and accelerated the mechanization of other enterprises as well. Improved crop and animal breeds further enhanced productivity in virtually every kind of agriculture. The most dramatic element that contributed to increased productivity during and after World War II was a new generation of chemicals. DDT, developed in the 1890s and rediscovered on the eve of World War II by Swiss chemists, controlled a wide range of pests far better than any previous insecticides. In 1945, 2,4-D, a broad-leafed weed herbicide developed

by scientists at the University of Chicago, became available to farmers. Also introduced at the end of the war was anhydrous ammonia, a gas that liquefies when it comes in contact with the air; it provided an easy and effective means of nitrogen fertilization. While these chemicals transformed the production of cultivars, animal raising was altered dramatically by the introduction of antibiotics and growth hormones. No branch of agriculture was unaffected by machinery, hybrids, and chemicals, but some were revolutionized. In no area was change more dramatic than in the cotton-growing South. There, landlords who had replaced sharecroppers with tractors in the planting phase could now do without laborers to chop cotton by using 2,4-D on weeds, and they could replace pickers by using mechanical cotton harvesters. The development of varieties in which the bolls ripened uniformly further facilitated mechanization. These developments interacted with one another in such a way as to doom sharecropping. As late as 1935, there were nearly 1.5 million sharecroppers in the South; by 1960 there were fewer than 200,000, and the Census Bureau announced it would no longer bother to count them. Machines, chemicals, and improved breeds and varieties led to an unprecedented surge in productivity. In 1940 one worker on a farm fed 10 people, and just five years later, 15. By 1970 one person on the farm fed 45, and 90 in 1990. This surge in agricultural productivity resulted in cheap food for urban consumers. In 1945 the average consumer spent about one-third of his or her income on food and beverages. By 1990, only about one-sixth of the average consumers income went for food and beverages. The revolution in agricultural productivity also led to an unprecedented rural-to-urban migration. Between 1945 and 1970, 21 million people left American farms for towns and cities. Usually they participated in and helped advance the postwar economic boom the United States enjoyed, but sometimes, especially when they lacked education and skills, they became part of an urban underclass that took on aspects of permanence.

While the agricultural revolution continues, with biotechnology playing an increasingly prominent role, we have already seen most of its significant effect on urban America. Food prices are unlikely to fall dramatically, and fewer than 4.5 million people now live on farms. As far as urban America is concerned, the agricultural revolution is effectively over.