Farming on the Great Plains

Farming on the Great Plains in the late 1800s

Taming the Great Plains into a fertile farming region did not come easily. The climate and landscape of the Plains presented formidable challenges. Furthermore, overcoming these challenges did not guarantee success or even provide security. Agricultural development in the West turned the United States into the world's breadbasket. Still, it also scarred the lives of hundreds of thousands of men and women who made the development possible.

Migration into the Great Plains

Settlement of the Plains and the West involved the most significant migration in American history. Between 1870 and 1900, more acres were settled and put under cultivation than in the previous 250 years. Males accounted for most migrants to new agricultural areas, outnumbering women by about six to five.

Fig. 1 - A photograph was taken in 1898 of a dutch family and their homestead in the Dakotas

Most migrants came from two places of origin: the eastern states or Europe. Several western states opened migration bureaus in the East and in Europe to lure settlers west. Land-grant railroads were incredibly aggressive, advertising cheap land, arranging credit terms, offering reduced fares, and promising instant success.

Most migrants went west because opportunities there seemed to offer a better life.

Revolutionary Changes in Farming on the Great Plains

With the demand for farm products and the increasing number of settlers moving west there came a need for better farming techniques and technology to increase crop yields and tame the prairie.

• Scientific advances enabled farmers to use the soil more efficiently. Agricultural experts developed the dry farming technique, a plowing system that prevented precious moisture from evaporating.
• Scientists perfected “hard” wheat varieties whose seeds could withstand northern winters.
• Millers invented an efficient process for grinding these tougher new wheat kernels into flour.
• Railroad expansion made remote farming regions more accessible and allowed for more efficient transportation to eastern markets.
• Grain elevator construction also eased problems of shipping and storage.
• Mechanization of the farming industry with mechanized seeders, harrows, combines, binders, mowers, headers, cultivators, rotary plows, and other machines was introduced to the Plains in the 1870s and 1880s.

Farming on the Great Plains Conditions

Despite such developments, life on the plains was much more challenging than advertised by those promoting the move westward. Migrants often encountered scarcities of essentials they had taken for granted back home. Vast tracts of land contained little lumber for housing and fuel. Pioneer families were forced to build houses of sod and burn manure for heat. Eventually, railroads made lumber and coal more available, but both were expensive.

Farming Problems on the Great Plains

Other problems were out of the control of the technology of the time that plagued the Great Plains farmer. Let's examine these problems.

Limited Water

Water was as scarce as timber. Few families were lucky or wealthy enough to buy land near a stream that did not dry in the summer or freeze in the winter. Most had to transport water over long distances or try to collect rainwater. Machinery for digging wells was limited until the 1880s; it was costly. Most wells were dug by hand and only to depths of fifty feet.

Climate and Weather

Even more formidable than the terrain of the Great Plains was the climate. The expanse between the Missouri River and the Rocky Mountains is divided by semi-arid regions from northeastern North Dakota and southwestern Kansas and southward to the Oklahoma panhandle. East of this line, annual rainfall averaged about 28 inches per year, enough for crops. West of this line, life-giving rain was never particular: farmers, heartened by adequate water one year, had dust and broken plows in limestone soil the next.

The weather seldom followed predictable patterns in any part of the region. In the summer, weeks of torrid heat and parching winds would suddenly give way to violent storms with flash floods washing away crops and homes. Winter blizzards piled up mountainous snowdrifts that halted all outdoor activities. Severe cold waves and howling winds plunged temperatures below zero.

Spring and fall, supposedly more temperate seasons, brought their challenges. In the spring, melting snow from the mountains swelled streams and flooded fields. In the fall, dry conditions could bring on prairie fires.

Crops Grown on the Great Plains

American settlers revolutionized the Great Plains into a productive agricultural region despite these hardships. By the early 1900s, the Great Plains were producing grains for not just the United States but enough to sell to the world and dominate international markets. The list below shows the crops grown in the Great Plains and where they were most prevalent.

• Wheat: produced in the Dakotas, Kansas, northern Oklahoma and Texas, eastern Colorado, and southern Nebraska

• Corn: grown in Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, South Dakota, and northern Kansas.

• Oats: grown in Wyoming, Colorado, Nebraska, and in regions of the Dakotas

• Loose Hay: grown in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Iowa.

Fig. 3 - A Grain Elevator in Hooker, Oklahoma

Farming in the Great Plains Summary

Settlement into the West and the various technological and scientific advances that made it possible altered American agriculture and forced farmers to adjust to a new age. Their adjustments were neither smooth nor painless. The social and economic problems that accompanied agricultural transformation eventually shaped the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in the United States.