The Evolution of Agriculture

We have discussed agriculture and it’s changes over the past two-hundred years. Compare the population 1900 to today for Texas, United States, And World. Today, i will tell you about comparing the population from 1900 to today In the 1900’s the total population was 75,994,266. The farm population was 29,414,000. The number of farms is 5,740,000. In Texas the population 1900 to today decreased United States- The United States population in the 1900’s 76.09 million Todays population is 325.34 million World Population- The world population in the 1900’s1.65 billion Today’s population is 7.6 billion The world population increase from the 1900’s to today The united states population has increased from 1900’s to today In the 1900’s modern Texas agriculture evolved from the agriculture of prehistoric Texans and agriculture practices transferred from, Europe, Asia, and Africa. Crops native to North America included the food staples corn, beans, and squash, and such diverse vegetables as tomatoes, “Irish” potatoes, chili peppers, yams, peanuts, and pumpkins. Spanish colonists introduced wheat, oats, barley, onions, peas, watermelons, and domestic animals, including cattle, horses, and hogs

Farms and plantations primarily utilized teams of oxen for plowing, and occasionally horses or mules. Mules became much more prevalent after the Civil War. Plows were fabricated locally, or, when cash was available, farmers might import farm equipment such as the eagle plow through New Orleans and Galveston. Commerce generally depended on wagons to and from the port of Galveston; some produce was floated down the rivers. Although steamboat transportation and railroad construction began in Texas before the Civil War, river streamer and rail transportation were generally post war developments. After the war the traditional cotton plantation system continued, but with tenant farmers in place of slaves. Tenants were both black and white, but the latter far outnumbered the former by 1880. As the economy became more of a money-based system, small farmers increasingly slipped into tenancy or left farming. Generally, in tenant farming the landlord or planter contracted with the tenant for the cultivation of a small plot of land (usually in the range of 16– 20 acres) on which the tenant was expected to raise as much cotton as possible. The planter ordinarily received one-third of the income from the crop for supplying the land, and one-third for provisioning the farmer with tools and housing, while the tenant received one-third for the labor. Credit was extremely expensive and scarce for the planter and disabling for the tenant, who commonly ended a year more deeply in debt than before they were in when they first got into debt.

Advanced cultivation practices, improved plant varieties, the mechanization of agriculture, and the greater availability of capital contributed to both higher yields and increased acreage in cultivation. Bonanza farming and large-scale cattle operations, often funded by foreign investors, developed in Texas in the 1880s. Many of these ventures failed in the depression of the 1890s. New corporate operations developed intermittently after 1900. By that time the basic structure of the state’s modern farming system appeared to be in place. While livestock producers focused upon raising cattle, sheep, and goats on the grazing areas that covered approximately 70 percent of the state’s acreage, farmers grew crops on 17.5 percent of the land. Cotton, planted on 60 percent of the state’s cultivated acreage, outdistanced all other commodities as a cash crop. Though it was grown in most areas of the state, the heaviest concentration was on the Blackland Prairies, the Coastal Plains around Corpus Christi, and the Southern High Plains. Acreage devoted to corn was usually second to cotton in the eastern half of the state, while sorghum was the leading livestock feed in the western half. Wheat, which was produced most extensively on the Northern High Plains and in the counties along the Red River, led the small grains and ranked second to cotton in cash crop receipts. Besides the citrus and vegetable industries in South Texas, such truck-farming goods as tomatoes, watermelons, and peas were marketed in northeastern Texas. On the Coastal Prairie rice was raised, and timber was important in the Piney Woods of East Texas. In most areas of the state cropland was interspersed with pastureland; stock farming was therefore more common than other farming.

In addition, they made major innovations in harvesting equipment further transformed Texas farming. By the 1920s the general acceptance of the combine, capable of doing the work of a binder or header and a thresher, they spurred the expansion of wheat production in the state. Whether owned by individual farmers or itinerant custom cutters, the combine underwent a series of technical improvements after World War II that ranged from the replacement of the tractor-drawn models with self-propelled machines to the enlargement of the header size from six feet to thirty feet and the development of attachments that allowed for cutting grain sorghum, corn, and similar commodities, all of which increased the farmers’ efficiency and versatility. In addition, machines for harvesting hay, spinach, potatoes, beans, sugar beets, pecans, peanuts, and other commodities reduced much of the labor requirements for producers.

Marketing also underwent change. Instead of sending their crops and livestock to distant terminal points on railroads, farmers and ranchers profited from the introduction of motor vehicles, particularly trucks, in the 1920s and the subsequent improvement in the roadways, which gave growers more options for delivering their produce directly to nearby gins, elevators, packing sheds, or livestock auctions for sale through cooperatives or to private buyers. Some producers engaged in futures trading through commercial brokers as a hedge against possible price declines. Though much of the produce went to fresh fruit and vegetable markets or cottonseed mills, flour mills, textile mills, meat-packing plants, canneries, or other processors both within the state and outside, all the Texas Gulf ports as well as those on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts became the debarkation points for Texas crops sent to all areas of the world. With rice, cotton, cottonseed oil, peanuts, and livestock products as the leading export goods.