250 Years of Agriculture
From the Ag Information Network, I’m Bob Larson. 250 years of agriculture has transformed America from innovation and
marketing to industrial development and mass production.
American agriculture has evolved, but transformed America …
LIEBHOLD … “From the beginning, we were an agricultural country. And today, where relatively few people are in agriculture, it remains an incredibly key part of industry.”
Retired Smithsonian Institution curator Peter Liebhold told USDA Radio it all started with marketing …
LIEBHOLD … “You have a nascent market economy, that farmers aren’t subsistence farmers, but they’re involved in exports, there’s cash money involved. And as markets become bigger, farmers start to move further west.”
Followed by standardized weights, measures, quality, and innovation …
LIEBHOLD … “Gasoline-powered vehicles, combines, tractors. It’s also the notion of fertilizer, it’s the notion of pesticides, it’s the notion of hybrids, hybrid animals, and hybrid seeds.”
Reinventing farming to be about yield, not just acres …
LIEBHOLD … “The advent of lightweight tractors in the beginning of the 1900s was made possible by factories like the Ford plant making on assembly lines inexpensive equipment.”
And with electrification of rural America …
LIEBHOLD … “You have milking machines, and you can use electricity to help dry your grain.”
Developments the Founding Fathers, Liebhold says could never have imagined.
but that over 250 years of independence have spurred America’s growth and development into the superpower it is today.
