Yesterday's Answers to Today's Problems
Acres Used for Organic Production in 2007. 1 dot = 250 acres.
The last century witnessed two major shifts in American agriculture: the westward movement of farmers in search of farmland and new technological advances. As the rich Eastern soil was continuously overexploited, farmers began to move further West looking for better farmland and leaving behind vast overused and infertile acreages.1 By the 1920s, most of American land had already been cultivated. Land prices shot up as it became harder to acquire. Farmers had to resort to whatever exhausted land they had once used up. This was where technology came in. The 20th century farmers started to practice extensive use of machines and chemicals to revitalize farmland. This transformation made the switch from small-sized and self-sustaining to large-scale and commercial farming desirable, but not without serious consequences.2
Over the last century, as American agriculture moved away from the tradition of yeoman farmers and into the realm of big business, serious concerns arose about the environmental and social impact of large-scale commercial farming. These concerns have existed for more than eighty years, but in recent decades, environmentalists have helped propel the idea of local, sustainable agriculture into mainstream culture. In addition to environmental issues such as the overuse of synthetic fertilizer and fossil fuels for transporting goods, commercial agriculture raises concerns about the survival of small family-owned farms.3 In response, farmers looked to traditional, self-sustainable family farms of the 19th century as models. They have dug into the past for solutions to modern day problems.
1 Fred A. Shannon, The Farmer's Last Frontier (New York: Farrar & Rinehart, Inc., 1945), 4-25.
2 Gilbert C. Fite, American Farmers: The New Minority (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1981), 120-136.
3 Paul K. Conkin, A Revolution Down on the Farm: The Transformation of American Agriculture since 1929 (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2008), 183-192.