known as the wet prairie. Early settlers simply lived with the fact that much of their farmland, in some cases as much as 40 percent, was not arable. They could graze it or cut prairie hay from it in late summer, but it was not viable for the farm family to excavate extensive drainage ditches or dig the trenches to lay a system of ceramic drain tiles (Prince 1997).
In the late nineteenth century, however, rising land prices put more pressure on farmers to develop this land. There was new steam-powered equipment available as well as more available laborers, lessening the pressure on the family. Provided 60 percent of farmers in the affected area approved, local drainage districts could be organized, each authorized to develop drainage plans, levy fees, and incur debt to implement those plans. While many drainage districts were financial failures and, where drainage succeeded there was a decline in biodiversity, the net result was a gain of millions of acres in arable land by 1930, much of it given over to corn, oats, and hay. As the old ceramic drain lines have broken over the years since tiling, farmers have turned to perforated plastic pipe to keep the land productive for the crops that pay the bills (Prince 1997).
While corn growing, livestock feeding and breeding, and dairy have been the iconic Midwestern commodities, the region’s record of diversity in commodity production is a defining trait. The Midwest, in comparison to much of the country, saw a much greater degree of diversification in commodity production. This is not to assert that other regions did not have diverse household and market production; rather, it means that farmers in the midcontinent had multiple paths to profit, often on one farm. Southern commodity agriculture was long dominated by cotton, tobacco, and, for a brief period and to a lesser degree, hemp. The states of the arid West were characterized by wheat and other cereals. New England farm profits were often driven by dairy, and while the Mid-Atlantic region had a tradition of diversified farming, the profit centers on those farms were often truck farming for nearby urban markets and canneries or fluid milk production. The Pacific Northwest was readily recognizable as fruit country. Only California rivaled or exceeded the Midwest in terms of diversity, a fact that may well reflect the midwestern roots of so many California farmers as much as its climate.
Midwestern farmers took advantage of excellent soil and optimal growing conditions in the midcontinent to develop extensive vegetable farming operations. Vegetable crops, long raised in truck patches strictly for local markets, expanded acreage with the rise of the canning industry after the Civil War. Production of tomatoes, cucumbers, beans, beets, asparagus, peas, pumpkin, and sweet corn for canning surged, starting in the 1870s. By the 1910s, Atlantic, Iowa, boasted of having the largest corn canning factory in the world, processing multiple crops and operating around the clock when vegetables were in season. At that time there were dozens of other such facilities in Iowa and hundreds more throughout the region. Canneries, however, faced stiff competition during their comparatively short season, with problems of operating capital, frequent breakdowns, and quality control issues making it difficult for most of them to survive (Goldberg 1995; Oden 2004; Smith-Howard 2014).
Orchard crops and viticulture were once staples of the midwestern farm economy. While many farms had orchards for home fruit supply and cider, before World War II midwestern fruit met not only local demand but was exported beyond the region. Much of this production, however, was no longer viable after World War II. The use of selective herbicides such as 2,4-D resulted in a widespread problem, with herbicide drift damaging trees and killing broad leaf fruit vines in regions with significant corn production. In Michigan, north of the Corn Belt, cherry production surged after World War II, with mechanization displacing hand labor, starting in the 1960s (Anderson 2009; Smith-Howard 2014).
Many other crops flourished in the Midwest, providing farmers with multiple paths to prosperity. The seed industry flourished, especially before World War II, with northwest Missouri producing large quantities of bluegrass seed for hay crops until being displaced by growers in the Pacific Northwest. The business of hybrid seed corn production to prepare millions of bushels of commercial seed corn provided reliable income in the years after World War II for thousands of farmers. Even mint production was a regular feature of production agriculture in Michigan, Indiana, and Wisconsin. The extract from the peppermint plant was used in the manufacture of chewing gum, candy, toothpaste, and medicine. Persistent fungus problems and cheaper production in Washington’s irrigated Yakima Valley resulted in the declining importance of midwestern mint (Smith-Howard 2014).
One of the Midwest’s notable secondary crops was the sugar beet, thanks to surging global sugar demand in the early twentieth century. Much of the acreage dedicated to this crop in the region was located in Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, Ohio, Wisconsin, Indiana, Iowa, and Nebraska. Early growers relied on locally available European immigrants for labor but, by World War II, increasingly relied on the migrant labor pool that had come north from Mexico to work in the vegetable fields and railroads. Growers could pay the Mexican workers less and found that relying on outsiders made it easier to combat nascent unionization efforts. With the labor shortages of World War II, the US government-organized Bracero program met these needs, further enhancing the reliance on Mexican labor in midwestern beet fields. The US embargo of Cuban sugar in 1960 increased the demand for beet sugar as well as the reliance on Mexican laborers (Valdes 1991; Norris 2014; Smith-Howard 2014).
World War II initiated a significant period of reorganization of the farm. Historians Dennis Nordin and Roy Scott described it as a period of heightened entrepreneurialism. While many farmers in the region had long been associated with technological mastery, postwar conditions removed many of the restraints that had held back production (Brinkman and Hirsch 2017). The period brought new implements that were specifically designed for farm tractors, permitting broader application of the investment in tractor horsepower. Labor shortages and the spread of rural electrification meant more use of electric motors for materials handling. Antibiotics for the treatment of illness and injury kept more animals alive, while the use of subtherapeutic antibiotics in feed permitted faster gains and conversion of feed to flesh (Finlay 2004; Nordin and Scott 2005; Anderson 2009). Hybrid seed corn, introduced in the 1920s, had made rapid gains in acreage during the 1930s and 1940s, becoming a nearly universally used technology in the region by war’s end (Fitzgerald 1990; Olmstead and Rhode 2008). New hybrids were designed for the shorter growing seasons of Wisconsin and Minnesota, with other hybrids developed to resist pests such as the European corn borer (Hudson 1994; Anderson, 2009).
One of the most important changes was the abandonment of the crop rotations that were pioneered in the late nineteenth century. Those crop rotations limited the draw on soil nutrients and prevented a buildup of pathogens and insects or weed species. Wartime industrial expansion in ammonium nitrate production for ordnance and research in growth-regulator herbicides and chlorinated hydrocarbon insecticides brought changes to Corn Belt farms. Eventually, farmers jettisoned their 5-year rotation due to the availability of these new farm chemicals. The oats and hay that they raised to feed draft animals was no longer needed, although the hay crop remained important for many livestock feeders. New machines such as corn picker-shellers and combines for small grains, and ultimately a combine adapted for corn, meant an abandonment of community-based threshing and the tedious season of hand corn picking. Liberated from these harvest bottlenecks and armed with new farm chemicals, farmers simultaneously industrialized and simplified their farm landscapes (Anderson 2009; Smith-Howard 2014).
Farmers in the Midwest also committed to changes in livestock raising. Despite the growing importance of pure-bred animals during the nineteenth and early twentieth century, most livestock marketed from the region were grades or cross-bred animals. It was common practice to purchase a blooded boar or to bring in a pure-bred bull for service in a mixed breed herd. Yet over the course of the twentieth century a growing percentage of farms raised blooded stock. The increased investment for pure-bred animals and the growing costs of crop production due to purchased inputs such as fertilizer and pesticides induced farmers to adopt new models: feedlots and confinement.
In the pasture system, cattle and hogs move to the feed, grazing large tracts of forage crops or even standing corn. Farmers could supplement the diet of pastured animals with corn or minerals, but animals ate at their own pace. Bringing cattle onto a feedlot
