Topics in Kansas History: Agriculture

Essay

People have been farming in Kansas for thousands of years. The state's history and identity is closely tied to its agricultural roots. Farming has been central to Kansas economy, politics, laws, innovations, culture, social customs, and traditions. Known as the "Wheat State" and "Breadbasket of the World," Kansas farmers continue to feed people around the world.

The first farmers in "Kansas" were American Indians. In addition to hunting for game, they ate wild plants that they gathered. Eventually they began to save the very best seeds and experiment. They planted the seed in soil near their homes, beginning the tradition of farming. These first farmers were usually women. They invented the first farming tools, using buffalo bones they made hoes to plant and harvest crops. Here they grew corn, beans, squash, pumpkins, and sunflowers, stockpiling the harvest underground in storage pits.

Settlers from eastern United States and directly from European countries brought their farming traditions when Kansas was opened to settlement in 1854. These settlers often brought seeds from crops they had planted in their homelands. Most farmers wanted to grow crops that they could sell. The standard farm size was 160 acres-too large for subsistence farms and not quite large enough for commercial ventures.

In the 1860s farming underwent a technological revolution that changed productivity and the way farmers worked the land. Horse-drawn sulky plows first appeared commercially during the 1860s and horses and mules powered early mechanical threshers that harvested the crops. Kansas farmers welcomed the advancements that helped them work the large, open prairie. These cultivators, binders, and reapers replaced slower, hand operations formerly used in crop production. A single farmer was able to do the work of several men and operate much larger farms. A farmer and three workhorses pulling a one-bottom walking plow could break only about two acres in one day. With a two-bottom, four or five horse-drawn sulky, the farmer could plow five to seven acres.

Settlers to Kansas began planning corn because it was familiar in the eastern United States. Corn had many uses-eaten as food for the family, ground into cornmeal for cooking, fed to livestock, and sold as a product. Farmers also tried growing oats, cotton, tobacco, and even grapes in vineyards. These crops did not fare as well in Kansas.

The grasshopper plague of 1874 and subsequent droughts led to the decline of corn as the top crop in Kansas. They began to experiment with planting other crops. At that same time, Mennonite settlers arriving from Russia brought with them seeds of Turkey Red wheat, a hardy variety that was well-suited to the Kansas climate. Farmers learned that the Kansas climate is best suited to winter wheat (planted in the fall and harvested in the spring) because most moisture arrives in winter and early spring. As wheat grew in popularity, technology advanced with mechanical threshing, which made it possible to work larger areas in a shorter period of time. Since most farmers could not afford their own steam engine, they shared labor and machinery with neighbors or hired custom crews to do this work for them.

"The harvesting of the extensive areas of wheat," said a Kansas farmer in 1880, "presents a picture of unique and fascinating interest. The pastoral old 'cradling' process is here superseded by an epic; the plentiful reaping-machine . . . first the ordinary, original reaper, which leaves the wheat lying behind it in a swath, like mown hay; next the self-raker, which drops it in convenient little bunches, ready for binding, then the header, which clips off only the tips and the stems, emptying them into a large uncouth box on an attendant wagon; and finally the self-binder, that perfection of farm machinery, that ghostly marvel of a thing, with a single sinister arm tossing the sheaves from it in such a nervous, spiteful feminine style."

As early as 1888 people were proclaiming Kansas the wheat state. "All parts of Kansas grow good corn but in wheat Kansas can beat the world," Topeka Daily Capital, 1888. In 1949 Kansas license plates first proclaimed "The Wheat State."

Kansas continues to be a leader in wheat, grain sorghum, and beef production. The state ranks among the top 10 states in farm product exports.

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