Making the Corn Belt

Making the Corn Belt PDF Author: John C. Hudson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
The Civil War demonstrated that, even though its agriculture was distinctive, the larger region was divided in social and political terms.

Making the Corn Belt

Making the Corn Belt PDF Author: John C. Hudson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
The Civil War demonstrated that, even though its agriculture was distinctive, the larger region was divided in social and political terms.

Industrializing the Corn Belt

Industrializing the Corn Belt PDF Author: Joseph Leslie Anderson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
From the late 1940s to the early 1970s, farmers in the Corn Belt transformed their region into a new, industrial powerhouse of large-scale production, mechanization, specialization, and efficiency. Many farm experts and implement manufacturers had urged farmers in this direction for decades, but it was the persistent labor shortage and cost-price squeeze following WWII that prompted farmers to pave the way to industrializing agriculture. Anderson examines the changes in Iowa, a representative state of the Corn Belt, in order to explore why farmers adopted particular technologies and how, over time, they integrated new tools and techniques. In addition to the impressive field machinery, grain storage facilities, and automated feeding systems were the less visible, but no less potent, chemical technologies--antibiotics and growth hormones administered to livestock, as well as insecticide, herbicide, and fertilizer applied to crops. Much of this new technology created unintended consequences: pesticides encouraged the proliferation of resistant strains of plants and insects while also polluting the environment and threatening wildlife, and the use of feed additives triggered concern about the health effects to consumers. In Industrializing the Corn Belt, J. L. Anderson explains that the cost of equipment and chemicals made unprecedented demands on farm capital, and in order to maximize production, farmers planted more acres with fewer but more profitable crops or specialized in raising large herds of a single livestock species. The industrialization of agriculture gave rural Americans a lifestyle resembling that of their urban and suburban counterparts. Yet the rural population continued to dwindle as farms required less human labor, and many small farmers, unable or unwilling to compete, chose to sell out. Based on farm records, cooperative extension reports, USDA publications, oral interviews, trade literature, and agricultural periodicals, Industrializing the Corn Belt offers a fresh look at an important period of revolutionary change in agriculture through the eyes of those who grew the crops, raised the livestock, implemented new technology, and ultimately made the decisions that transformed the nature of the family farm and the Midwestern landscape.

From Prairie to Corn Belt

From Prairie to Corn Belt PDF Author: Allan G. Bogue
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
ISBN: 9780813822181
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 309

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Book Description
This is a study of the development of farming in the prairie states. The book emphasises the individual farmer (the man with dirt on his hands and dung on his boots), and the problems and developments that have forced him to make decisions about his farm business.

Corn Belt Harvest

Corn Belt Harvest PDF Author: Raymond Bial
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 9780395562345
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 56

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Book Description
Text and photographs describe the United States Corn Belt region and its harvest season.

Practical Corn Culture

Practical Corn Culture PDF Author: William Thomas Ainsworth
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Corn
Languages : en
Pages : 170

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Book Description


The Corn Belt

The Corn Belt PDF Author: Oliver Edwin Baker
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Agriculture
Languages : en
Pages : 465

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Book Description


A Program for the Corn Belt

A Program for the Corn Belt PDF Author: Henry Agard Wallace
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 7

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Book Description


Perilous Bounty

Perilous Bounty PDF Author: Tom Philpott
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1635573149
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice An unsettling journey into the disaster-bound American food system, and an exploration of possible solutions, from leading food politics commentator and former farmer Tom Philpott. More than a decade after Michael Pollan's game-changing The Omnivore's Dilemma transformed the conversation about what we eat, a combination of global diet trends and corporate interests have put American agriculture into a state of "quiet emergency," from dangerous drought in California--which grows more than 50 percent of the fruits and vegetables we eat--to catastrophic topsoil loss in the "breadbasket" heartland of the United States. Whether or not we take heed, these urgent crises of industrial agriculture will define our future. In Perilous Bounty, veteran journalist and former farmer Tom Philpott explores and exposes the small handful of seed and pesticide corporations, investment funds, and magnates who benefit from the trends that imperil us, with on-the-ground dispatches featuring the scientists documenting the damage and the farmers and activists who are valiantly and inventively pushing back. Resource scarcity looms on the horizon, but rather than pointing us toward an inevitable doomsday, Philpott shows how the entire wayward ship of American agriculture could be routed away from its path to disaster. He profiles the farmers and communities in the nation's two key growing regions developing resilient, soil-building, water-smart farming practices, and readying for the climate shocks that are already upon us; and he explains how we can help move these methods from the margins to the mainstream.

The Changing Scale of American Agriculture

The Changing Scale of American Agriculture PDF Author: John Fraser Hart
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 9780813922294
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
Few Americans know much about contemporary farming, which has evolved dramatically over the past few decades. In The Changing Scale of American Agriculture, the award-winning geographer and landscape historian John Fraser Hart describes the transformation of farming from the mid-twentieth century, when small family farms were still viable, to the present, when a farm must sell at least $250,000 of farm products each year to provide an acceptable level of living for a family. The increased scale of agriculture has outmoded the Jeffersonian ideal of small, self-sufficient farms. In the past farmers kept a variety of livestock and grew several crops, but modern family farms have become highly specialized in producing a single type of livestock or one or two crops. As farms have become larger and more specialized, their number has declined. Hart contends that modern family farms need to become integrated into tightly orchestrated food-supply chains in order to thrive, and these complex new organizations of large-scale production require managerial skills of the highest order. According to Hart, this trend is not only inevitable, but it is beneficial, because it produces the food American consumers want to buy at prices they can afford. Although Hart provides the statistics and clear analysis such a study requires, his book focuses on interviews with farmers: those who have shifted from mixed crop-and-livestock farming to cash-grain farming in the Midwest agricultural heartland; beef, dairy, chicken, egg, turkey, and hog producers around the periphery of the heartland; and specialty crop producers on the East and West Coasts. These invaluable case studies bring the reader into direct personal contact with the entrepreneurs who are changing American agriculture. Hart believes that modern large-scale farmers have been criticized unfairly, and The Changing Scale of American Agriculture, the result of decades of research, is his attempt to tell their side of the story.

Practical Corn Culture Written Especially for the Corn Belt Farmers

Practical Corn Culture Written Especially for the Corn Belt Farmers PDF Author: William Thomas Ainsworth
Publisher: Forgotten Books
ISBN: 9781330168554
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 173

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Book Description
Excerpt from Practical Corn Culture Written Especially for the Corn Belt Farmers During the past ten years great progress has been made in the cultivation and care of corn, both for seed and market. During this time few books have been written which have kept up with this progress. What has been written has pertained largely to the attacks of insect and fungous pests and to the selection and care of corn for seed. Very little that would be of practical benefit to the busy, farmer has been written on the culture of corn. We have long felt the need of such a book and have at length been induced by our friends to attempt the work ourselves. The result is seen in the volume now placed before the public. Our aim has been to make this book up-to-date in every particular and to cover the entire practice of corn growing, from the cutting of the stalks in the spring to the selection and testing of the seed for next year's crop. We have purposely started with the preparation of the seed bed because we know that some readers will start this book and will not finish it. If only a little is read, we are especially anxious that the reader get that part pertaining to the growing of the crop. The writers are both actively engaged in farming seven hundred acres of land, and W. T. Ainsworth has been growing corn on his Cloverdale farm for over thirty-five years. No apology is offered for the manner in which the subject is treated. The public must be the sole judge as to whether the book is deserving of commendation. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.