The Revolution in Agriculture
Copyright © 2005-6, Henry J. Sage

In the mid-19th century American farmers became victims of the law of supply and demand. Using new technology, superior farming methods, abundant labor, better irrigation and chemical processes, American farmersproduced ever larger crops of grains, meats, vegetables, and dairy products. Where one farmer might have been able to feed 5 to 10 people in 1800, by 1900 a farmer could produce enough food for perhaps 100 people, depending on the type of product he farmed. As the supply of farm commodities stayed even with or even outpaced the demand for food, the price of farm goods was driven downward. In order to maintain their income levels, farmers worked harder and harder to produce more and more goods, and the more successful they became, the more prices tended to be depressed. By the early 1920s, for example, the price of bread was the lowest it had been in hundreds of years, when compared with prices of other commonly used commodities.

The technological revolution also had mixed effects on farmers: although they were able to get their products to market more efficiently, so were their competitors. Thus American beef producers found themselves competing not only with each other but with beef produced in such far-off countries as Argentina. Cotton farmers were faced with similar competition from growing production in Egypt and India. While railroads were a boon to farmers, they often operated under monopolistic circumstances and were thus able to charge farmers whatever the traffic would bear, and then some. In order to move, store and transport large quantities of grain, storage facilities had to be provided, and they were often built, owned and operated by the same railroads that were able to charge steep prices.

The isolation of farmers in the West also tended to work against them psychologically. With large tracts of land needed to produce abundant crops on the plains, actual farms were widely separated from each other, with the result that there was limited communication and interaction among farmers, even within farmer's own families. A hard-working farmer might rise early in the morning, set out for the fields and not return until nightfall. Whatever means of transportation, animal or mechanical, was used in the cultivation of crops, it could not be spared very easily for trips to the nearest town, which might be miles away. Women on the Great Plains were particularly subject to the melancholy produced by extended periods of isolation, when the only human contact they might have for days on end was with their children and the brief periods in morning and evening when they saw their husbands.

Even in modern times—since World War II—farm aid has been a persistent economic and political issue in the United States. During the Depression years, when the western plains were ravaged by drought, the government did everything possible to support the economic condition of farmers. Much New Deal legislation was aimed at helping businessmen-farmers, and farm and dairy price supports became an accepted feature of farm life. As farming methods continued to improve, farm machinery became much more effective and efficient, but at the same time much more expensive. In recent times large combines for harvesting and separating grain crops can cost in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Few people question the need for a healthy farm economy—after all, people have to eat—but keeping farming a profitable enterprise in the face of conditions that can often be extremely difficult to control remains a continuing challenge.

History 122 Part 1