A Companion to American Agricultural History

A Companion to American Agricultural History

Author: R. Douglas Hurt

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2022-05-11

Total Pages: 608

ISBN-13: 1119632242

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Provides a solid foundation for understanding American agricultural history and offers new directions for research A Companion to American Agricultural History addresses the key aspects of America’s complex agricultural past from 8,000 BCE to the first decades of the twenty-first century. Bringing together more than thirty original essays by both established and emerging scholars, this innovative volume presents a succinct and accessible overview of American agricultural history while delivering a state-of-the-art assessment of modern scholarship on a diversity of subjects, themes, and issues. The essays provide readers with starting points for their exploration of American agricultural history—whether in general or in regards to a specific topic—and highlights the many ways the agricultural history of America is of integral importance to the wider American experience. Individual essays trace the origin and development of agricultural politics and policies, examine changes in science, technology, and government regulations, offer analytical suggestions for new research areas, discuss matters of ethnicity and gender in American agriculture, and more. This Companion: Introduces readers to a uniquely wide range of topics within the study of American agricultural history Provides a narrative summary and a critical examination of field-defining works Introduces specific topics within American agricultural history such as agrarian reform, agribusiness, and agricultural power and production Discusses the impacts of American agriculture on different groups including Native Americans, African Americans, and European, Asian, and Latinx immigrants Views the agricultural history of America through new interdisciplinary lenses of race, class, and the environment Explores depictions of American agriculture in film, popular music, literature, and art A Companion to American Agricultural History is an essential resource for introductory students and general readers seeking a concise overview of the subject, and for graduate students and scholars wanting to learn about a particular aspect of American agricultural history.


Chronological Landmarks in American Agriculture

Chronological Landmarks in American Agriculture

Author:

Publisher:

Published: 1990

Total Pages: 112

ISBN-13:

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This chronology lists major events in the history of U.S. agriculture. A source to which the reader may turn for additional information on the subject is included with most of the events. Generally, each source appears only once, although it may apply to more than one chronological citation. pp. The reader interested in a particular subject can compile a short bibliography by consulting each citation for that subject.


Colorado River Basin Water Management

Colorado River Basin Water Management

Author: National Research Council

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2007-06-30

Total Pages: 222

ISBN-13: 0309105242

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Recent studies of past climate and streamflow conditions have broadened understanding of long-term water availability in the Colorado River, revealing many periods when streamflow was lower than at any time in the past 100 years of recorded flows. That information, along with two important trends-a rapid increase in urban populations in the West and significant climate warming in the region-will require that water managers prepare for possible reductions in water supplies that cannot be fully averted through traditional means. Colorado River Basin Water Management assesses existing scientific information, including temperature and streamflow records, tree-ring based reconstructions, and climate model projections, and how it relates to Colorado River water supplies and demands, water management, and drought preparedness. The book concludes that successful adjustments to new conditions will entail strong and sustained cooperation among the seven Colorado River basin states and recommends conducting a comprehensive basinwide study of urban water practices that can be used to help improve planning for future droughts and water shortages.


Homesteading Women

Homesteading Women

Author: Julie Jones-Eddy

Publisher: Macmillan Reference USA

Published: 1992

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13:

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"The popular image of the settling of the American West has primarily been of cowboys, soldiers, miners, and trappers--the white men. In Homesteading Women: An Oral History of Colorado, 1890-1950 Julie Jones-Eddy brings to light the reality of the frontier through the oral testimonies of some of the women whose strength and perseverance were essential to the establishment of families, farms, and communities in the West." "Homesteading Women is a compilation of Jones-Eddy's interviews with 47 women between the ages of 55 and 95--some married, some mothers, some employed, but all survivors of the rigors of homesteading in a demanding and, at times, hostile environment. The interviewees vividly recall frontier attitudes toward childhood, marriage, pregnancy and birth, work, health care, daily life, and death. Some of the women worked in the home, while others had roles in the fields alongside the men in addition to their domestic duties. Maintaining the home--whether it be a tent, a dugout, or a log cabin--was strenuous work, as the women had to cope with cold, altitude, and isolation, haul fuel and water, tend livestock, make preserves, soap, lard, and clothes, and generate cash with their "butter and egg" money. Outside the home, traditional gender lines were often blurred as women performed arduous tasks in caring for farm animals and working the land." "Jones-Eddy provides many of her questions along with the interviewees' answers, thereby preserving the dialogue that elicited their responses. The result is an especially warm and personal account of an era and a way of life now gone by." "Homesteading Women includes a chapter by Professor Elizabeth Jameson, coeditor of The Women's West. Jameson places the oral testimonies within a greater historical context and highlights the significant contribution these women made not only to their communities but to women's history in general."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved


Silver Fox of the Rockies

Silver Fox of the Rockies

Author: Daniel Tyler

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 428

ISBN-13: 9780806135151

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Delphus E. Carpenter (1877–1951) was Colorado’s commissioner of interstate streams during a time when water rights were a legal battleground for western states. A complex, unassuming man as rare and cunning in politics and law as the elusive silver fox of the Rocky Mountain West, Carpenter boldly relied on negotiation instead of endless litigation to forge agreements among states first, before federal intervention. In Silver Fox of the Rockies, Daniel Tyler tells Carpenter’s story and that of the great interstate water compacts he helped create. Those compacts, produced in the early twentieth century, have guided not only agricultural use but urban growth and development throughout much of the American West to this day. In Carpenter’s time, most western states relied on the doctrine of prior appropriation--first in time, first in right--which granted exclusive use of resources to those who claimed them first, regardless of common needs. Carpenter feared that population growth and rapid agricultural development in states sharing the same river basins would rob Colorado of its right to a fair share of water. To avoid that eventuality, Carpenter invoked the compact clause of the U.S. Constitution, a clause previously used to settle boundary disputes, and applied it to interstate water rights. The result was a mechanism by which complex issues involving interstate water rights could be settled through negotiation without litigating them before the U.S. Supreme Court. Carpenter believed in the preservation of states rights in order to preserve the constitutionally mandated balance between state and federal authority. Today, water remains critically important to the American West, and the great interstate water compacts Carpenter helped engineer constitute his most enduring legacy. Of particular significance is the Colorado River Compact of 1922, without which Hoover Dam could never have been built.