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Increases in farm production throughout most of the nation’s history had come mainly from the development of new land, but by the late 1800s poor farming practices had depleted nutrients in the soil – and agricultural production and quality began to decline.
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Booker T. Washington and George Washington Carver worked to improve the lives of former slaves as well as all Southern farmers. Booker T. Washington believed that education was the way to true emancipation.
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Northern farmers produced a variety of crops and livestock, sometimes supplemented by craftwork.
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George Washington Carver was an agricultural scientist who headed the agricultural department at Tuskegee
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Government support of science, technology, and education to improve agriculture gave American farmers an edge over the rest of the world. Research into new varieties of foodstuffs (such as navel oranges for California and sugar beets for the Midwest),
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The Homestead Act offered 160 acres of free land to settlers who would farm it for five years, making the Great Plains a land of opportunity. Homesteaders rushed to fill the open lands. Homesteading also brought fresh waves of immigrants in pursuit of their dreams.
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The Civil War destroyed much of the South and its plantations. More dramatically, four million slaves were suddenly freed with no land, no money and little opportunity. A tenant farming system called sharecropping evolved in the South to make use of cheap labor.
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In 1870 nearly half of all Americans worked as agricultural laborers and more than three-fourths of America’s exports were agricultural goods.
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The westward expansion of railroads to the Pacific Ocean was extremely important to the growth and development of agriculture.
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As the USDA shared its discoveries with the American public the landscape began to change.
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Increasing mechanization continued to improve the productivity of American farmers. Scientists also discovered new crops for American farmers to grow and develop new breeds of livestock to provide more meat, milk, eggs and wool.
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By 1900 industrial technology had brought widespread improvements to farmers. Dams supplied irrigation water to dry land and USDA scientists introduced American farmers to new plants, including nectarines from Afghanistan, broccoli and seedless raisin grapes from Italy and a new avocado from Chile
