Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-wq2xx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-23T11:15:28.070Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Soil Fertility on an Agricultural Frontier: The US Great Plains, 1880–2000

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 August 2021

Geoff Cunfer Open the ORCID record for Geoff Cunfer [Opens in a new window]
Geoff Cunfer*
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK, Canada
*
Email: geoff.cunfer@usask.ca
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In contrast to most long-settled agricultural landscapes, the US Great Plains presents a rare example of well-documented agricultural colonization of new land. The Census of Agriculture provides detailed information about evolving grassland farm systems from the beginning of agricultural expansion and then at some two dozen time points between 1880 and the present. From early sod-busting, through drought and depression, and into late-twentieth-century modernization, it is possible to track how farmers used their land in any county. Treating farmland as an agroecosystem, a hybrid human-natural landscape, this article asks how farmers captured, altered, and replenished soil fertility. Did they extract more soil nitrogen than they returned, or did they maintain a balance? The article assesses land use from a soil nutrients perspective in several plains environments to capture variation in climate (especially rainfall), native soil quality, and availability of irrigation water. It traces farm management strategies through time to understand agricultural crises, growth periods, and technological transitions in the context of soil fertility. Soil management on an agricultural frontier was markedly different from that in places that had been farmed for centuries. A shortage of people and livestock and an abundance of deep, rich soils in the plains informed farmers’ calculations as they juggled labor, capital, and market forces against family and financial strategies. Uniform methods of estimating and representing soil nutrient processes make possible a direct comparison of the relative sustainability of historical agroecosystems.

Keywords

soil fertilityGreat Plains agriculturehuman-nature interactionssocio-ecological metabolismnitrogen balances in historical agro-ecosystems
Type
Special Issue Article
Information
Social Science History , Volume 45 , Special Issue 4: Soils and Sustainability , Winter 2021 , pp. 733 - 762
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Social Science History Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Allen, Robert C. (2008) “The nitrogen hypothesis and the English agriculture revolution: A biological analysis.” Journal of Economic History (68): 182–210.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bayliss-Smith, Timothy P. (1982) The Ecology of Agricultural Systems. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Boring, L. R., Swank, W. T., Waide, J. B., and Henderson, G. S. (1988) “Sources, fates, and impacts of nitrogen inputs to terrestrial ecosystem: Review and synthesis.” Biogeochemistry (6): 119–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brooking, Tom, and Eric, Pawson, eds. (2011) Seeds of Empire: The Environmental Transformation of New Zealand. I.B. Tauris.Google Scholar
Courtwright, Julie (2011) Prairie Fire: A Great Plains History. University Press of Kansas.Google Scholar
Craven, Avery Odelle (2006 [1925]) Soil Exhaustion as a Factor in the Agricultural History of Virginia and Maryland, 1606–1860. University of South Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Cunfer, Geoff (2001) “The New Deal’s land utilization program in the Great Plains.” Great Plains Quarterly (21): 193–210.Google Scholar
Cunfer, Geoff (2004) “Manure matters on the Great Plains frontier.” Journal of Interdisciplinary History (34): 539–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cunfer, Geoff (2005) On the Great Plains: Agriculture and Environment. Texas A&M University Press.Google Scholar
Cunfer, Geoff, and Fridolin, Krausmann (2009) “Sustaining soil fertility: Agricultural practice in the old and new worlds,” Global Environment (4): 8–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cunfer, Geoff, and Fridolin, Krausmann (2016) “Adaptation on an agricultural frontier: Socio-ecological profiles of Great Plains settlement, 1870–1940.” Journal of Interdisciplinary History (46): 1–38.Google Scholar
Cunfer, Geoff, Andrew, Watson, and Joshua, MacFadyen (2018) “Energy profiles of an agricultural frontier: The American Great Plains, 1860–2000.” Regional Environmental Change (18): 1021–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cushman, Gregory T. (2013) Guano and the Opening of the Pacific World: A Global Ecological History. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cusso, Xavier, Ramon, Garrabou, and Enric, Tello (2006) “Social metabolism in an agrarian region of Catalonia (Spain) in 1860 to 1870: Flows, energy balance and land use.” Ecological Economics (59): 49–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Danbom, David B. (1995) Born in the Country: A History of Rural America. Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Donahue, Brian (2004) The Great Meadow: Farmers and the Land in Colonial Concord. Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Duffin, Andrew (2007) Plowed Under: Agriculture and Environment in the Palouse. University of Washington Press.Google Scholar
Egan, Timothy (2006) The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl. Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar
Fischer-Kowalski, Marina, and Helmut, Haberl, eds. (2007) Socioecological Transitions and Global Change: Trajectories of Social Metabolism and Land Use. Edward Elgar.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fitzgerald, Deborah (2003) Every Farm a Factory: The Industrial Ideal in American Agriculture. Yale University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garcia-Ruiz, Roberto, Manuel, Gonzalez de Molina, Gloria, Guzman, David, Soto, and Juan, Infante-Amate (2012) “Guidelines for constructing nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium balances in historical agricultural systems.” Journal of Sustainable Agriculture (36): 650–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gingrich, Simone, Ines, Marco, Eduardo, Aguilera, Roc, Padró, Claudio, Cattaneo, Geoff, Cunfer, Guzmán Casado, Gloria I., Joshua, MacFadyen, and Andrew, Watson (2018) “Agroecosystem energy transitions in the Old and New Worlds: Trajectories and determinants at the regional scale.” Regional Environmental Change (18): 1089–1101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldewijk, Kees Klein (2001) “Estimating global land use change over the past 300 years: The HYDE database.” Global Biogeochemical Cycles (40): 417–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gonzalez de Molina, Manuel, and Toledo, Victor M. (2014) The Social Metabolism: A Socio-Ecological Theory of Historical Change. Springer.Google Scholar
Grant, Michael (2002) Down and Out on the Family Farm: Rural Rehabilitation in the Great Plains, 1929–1945. University of Nebraska Press.Google Scholar
Gregg, Sara (2010) Managing the Mountains: Land Use Planning, the New Deal, and the Creation of a Federal Landscape in Appalachia. Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Green, Donald E. (1973) Land of the Underground Rain: Irrigation on the Texas High Plains, 1910–1970. University of Texas Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gutmann, Myron P. (2005) Great Plains Population and Environment Data: Agricultural Data, 1870–1997 [machine-readable dataset]. ICPSR04254-v1. Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gutmann, Myron P. (2007) Great Plains Population and Environment Data: Social and Demographic Data, 1870–2000 [machine-readable dataset]. ICPSR04296-v2. Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research.Google Scholar
Gutmann, Myron P., Parton, William J., Geoff, Cunfer, and Burke, Ingrid C. (2005) “Population and environment in the US Great Plains,” in Barbara Entwisle and Paul C. Stern (eds.) Population, Land Use, and Environment: Research Directions.: National Research Council, National Academy Press: 84–105.Google Scholar
Haas, H. J., Evans, C. E., and Miles, E. F. (1957) “Nitrogen and carbon changes in Great Plains soils as influenced by cropping and soil treatments.” USDA Technical Bulletin no. 1164. Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
Hargreaves, Mary M. W. (1957) Dry Farming in the Northern Great Plains, 1900–1925. Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Hargreaves, Mary M. W. (1993) Dry Farming in the Northern Great Plains: Years of Readjustment, 1920–1990. University Press of Kansas.Google Scholar
Holland, E. A., Braswell, B. H., Sulzman, J., and Lamarque, J. F. (2005) “Nitrogen deposition onto the United States and western Europe: Synthesis of observations and models.” Ecological Applications (15): 38–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hurt, R. Douglas (1981) The Dust Bowl: An Agricultural and Social History. Nelson-Hall.Google Scholar
Hurt, R. Douglas (2011) The Big Empty: The Great Plains in the Twentieth Century. University of Arizona Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hutcheson, T. B., Wolfe, T. K., and Kipps, M. S. (1936) The Production of Field Crops: A Textbook of Agronomy. McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Jones, Richard (2012) Manure Matters: Historical, Archaeological and Ethnographic Perspectives. Ashgate.Google Scholar
Kansas State Board of Agriculture (1937) Soil Erosion by Wind. Kansas State Printing Plant.Google Scholar
Kirkendall, Richard (1966) Social Scientists and Farm Politics in the Age of Roosevelt. University of Missouri Press.Google Scholar
Maher, Neil M. (2008) Nature’s New Deal: The Civilian Conservation Corps and the Roots of the American Environmental Movement. Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Malin, James C. (1944) Winter Wheat in the Golden Belt of Kansas: A Study in Adaptation to Subhumid Geographical Environment. University of Kansas Press.Google Scholar
Maxwell, Susan K., and Sylvester, Kenneth M. (2012) “Identification of ‘ever-cropped’ land (1984–2010) using Landsat annual maximum NDVI image composites: Southwestern Kansas case study.” Remote Sensing of the Environment (121): 186–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McNeill, J. R., and Verena, Winiwarter, eds. (2006) Soils and Societies: Perspectives from Environmental History. White Horse Press.Google Scholar
Miner, Craig (1986) West of Wichita: Settling the High Plains of Kansas, 1865–1890. University of Kansas Press.Google Scholar
Miner, Craig (2006) Next Year Country: Dust to Dust in Western Kansas, 1890–1940. University of Kansas Press.Google Scholar
Montgomery, David R. (2007) Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations. University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moon, David (2013) The Plow That Broke the Steppes: Agriculture and Environment on Russia’s Grasslands, 1700–1914. Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Olarieta, J. R., Padro, R., Massip, G., Rodriguez-Ochoa, R., Vicedo, E., and Tello, E. (2011) “‘Formiguers,’ A historical system of soil fertilization (and biochar production?).” Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment (140): 27–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Opie, John (1993) Ogallala: Water for a Dry Land. University of Nebraska Press.Google Scholar
Phillips, Sarah T. (2007) This Land, This Nation: Conservation, Rural America, and the New Deal. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pyne, Stephen J. (1982) Fire in America: A Cultural History of Wildland and Rural Fire. University of Washington Press.Google Scholar
Pyne, Stephen J. (2001) Fire: A Brief History. University of Washington Press.Google Scholar
Richards, John (2003) The Unending Frontier: An Environmental History of the Early Modern World. University of California Press.Google Scholar
Rooks County Historical Society (1981) Lest We Forget. Osborne County Farmer.Google Scholar
Scott, James C. (1998) Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Smil, Vaclav (2001) Enriching the Earth: Fritz Haber, Carl Bosch, and the Transformation of World Food Production. MIT Press.Google Scholar
Stoll, Steven (2002) Larding the Lean Earth: Soil and Society in Nineteenth-Century America. Hill and Wang.Google Scholar
Sylvester, Kenneth M., and Geoff, Cunfer (2009) “An unremembered diversity: Mixed husbandry and the American grasslands.” Agricultural History (83): 352–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sylvester, Kenneth M., Myron, Gutmann, and Brown, Dan G. (2016) “At the margins: Agriculture, subsidies and the shifting fate of North America’s native grassland.” Population and Environment (37): 362–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sylvester, Kenneth M., Susan Hautaniemi, Leonard, Gutmann, Myron P., and Geoff, Cunfer (2006) “Demography and environment in grassland settlement: Using linked longitudinal and cross-sectional data to explore household and agricultural systems.” History and Computing (14): 31–60.Google Scholar
Sylvester, Kenneth M., and Eric, Rupley (2012) “Revising the Dust Bowl: High above the Kansas grasslands.” Environmental History (17): 603–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tello, Enric, Garrabou, Ramon, Cusso, Xavier, Olarieta, Jose Ramon and Galan, Elena (2012) “Fertilizing methods and nutrient balances at the end of traditional organic agriculture in the Mediterranean bioregion: Catalonia (Spain) in the 1860s.” Human Ecology (40): 369–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tisdale, Samuel, Nelson, Werner L., Beaton, James D., and Havlin, John L. (1993) Soil Fertility and Fertilizers. 5th ed. Macmillan.Google Scholar
Turner, Billie L., Matson, Pamela A., McCarthy, James J., Corell, Robert W., Lindsey, Christensen, Noelle, Eckley, Hovelsrud-Broda, Grete K., Kasperson, Jeanne X., Kasperson, Roger E., Amy, Luers, Martello, Marybeth L., Svein, Mathiesen, Rosamond, Naylor, Colin, Polsky, Alexander, Pulsipher, Andrew, Schiller, Henrik, Selin, and Nicholas, Tyler (2003) “Illustrating the coupled human-environment system for vulnerability analysis: Three case studies.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 100 (14): 8080–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Unkovich, M., and Baldock, J. (2008) “Measurement of asymbiotic N2 fixation in Australian agriculture.” Soil Biology and Biochemistry (40): 2915–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
US Census Bureau (2017) “World population: Historical estimates of world population. www.census.gov/population/international/data/worldpop/table_history.php Google Scholar
US Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service (2013) Fertilizer Use and Price [machine-readable dataset]. www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/fertilizer-use-and-price/ Google Scholar
US Department of Agriculture, National Agricultural Statistics Service (2017) Agricultural Chemical Use Program [machine-readable dataset]. www.nass.usda.gov/Surveys/Guide_to_NASS_Surveys/Chemical_Use/ Google Scholar
US Department of Agriculture, Natural Resources Conservation Service (2003) Soil Survey of Nemaha County, Kansas. Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
US Department of Agriculture, Soil Conservation Service (1978) Soil Survey of Pawnee County, Kansas. Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
US Department of Agriculture, Soil Conservation Service (1982) Soil Survey of Rooks County, Kansas. Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
US Department of Agriculture, Yearbook of Agriculture (1960) Power to Produce. Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
US Department of Agriculture, Yearbook of Agriculture (1980) Cutting Energy Costs. Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
Vázquez, A., Costoya, M., Peña, R. M., García, M., and Herrero, C. (2003) “A rainwater quality monitoring network: A preliminary study of the composition of rainwater in Galicia (NW Spain).” Chemosphere (51): 375–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Watson, Andrew (2020) “‘The Single Most Important Factor’: Fossil fuel energy, groundwater, and irrigation on the High Plains, 1955–1985.” Agricultural History (94): 629–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wishart, David J., ed. (2007) Encyclopedia of the Great Plains. University of Nebraska Press.Google Scholar
Worster, Donald (1979) Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Worster, Donald (1990) “Transformations of the Earth: Toward an agroecological perspective in history.” Journal of American History (76): 1087–1106.CrossRefGoogle Scholar