mercialization of Agriculture in the United States
Thomas Jefferson, a Founding Father of the United States, believed that farmers were the foundation of American democracy.To execute his plan for democracy, Jefferson proposed the United States Rectangular Land Survey- -familiarly known as the grid. Under the plan, surveyors were first sent to eastern Ohio with instructions to divide the land into boxes that would measure six miles square. Then they were instructed to divide these larger boxes into smaller ones, one-mile square, which were divided yet again into quarter sections measuring 160 acres each, considered to be the appropriate size for a single farm. In 1785 Congress passed the grid into law, and from that point on the same checkerboard pattern was etched across the West- -one of the most far-reaching attempts at rationalizing a landscape in world history.
The grid was the outward expression of a culture wedded not simply to democracy but to markets and exchange as well. It would aid in the rapid settlement of the country, turning millions of Americans into independent landowners, while at the same time transforming the land itself- its varied topography, soil, and water conditions- into a commodity, a uniform set of boxes easily bought and sold. But the grid was only the first step in the commercialization of Western farmlands.
Once farmers purchased land they needed to plow up the existing vegetation. The grasses that thrived on the organically rich, deep soil laid down by the glaciers thousands of years earlier were at first a challenge to cut. Wooden plows with edges made of iron proved virtually useless. The development and spread of the steel plow-invented in 1837 by John Deere, an llinois blacksmith- -made plowing successful. In place of the native vegetation, farmers planted corn and wheat, domesticated species of grass that grow best in a monocultural environment, that is, in fields by themselves. These crops tend to grow quickly, storing carbohydrates in their seeds. With bread constituting a major component of the American diet, wheat would eventually emerge as the West’s major cash crop; acres and acres of some of the world’s best agricultural land in states such as Ohio, Indiana, llinois, lowa, and Kansas were plowed up and given over to the plant.
In the early years of setlement, farmers grew a variety of grains, including wheat, corn, oats, rye, and barley. Increasingly, however, farmers became more specialized, as commercial agriculture, aided by improved railroad transportation, proceeded apace. Much of the grain ended up in the Northeast, where, by the 1840s, population growth had outstripped the local farm economy’s ability to provide. In effect, the West’s surplus of soil wealth underwrote industrial development farther east.
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