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 and ranchers continue to feed people around the world.

Between 1860 and 1920, numerous mechanical and technological improvements in farm equipment changed the way farmers worked the land. Horse- drawn sulky plows, cultivators, binders, and reapers replaced slower, hand operations formerly used in crop production. Portable steam engines, introduced in the 1870s, and gasoline engines, available in the 1890s, enabled even more land to be cultivated and greatly reduced the amount of time and man-power needed to harvest crops.

Village Farmers

The first farmers in "Kansas" were Native Americans. They gathered wild plants for food. Eventually they began to save the very best seeds and experiment. They planted the seed in the soil near their homes. This began the tradition of farming. These first farmers were women. They invented the first farming tools, using buffalo bones to plant and harvest crops.

Adaptation

When pioneer settlers moved onto the frontier west of the Mississippi River, they found that their new environment lacked many natural resources, such as trees and rivers. They adapted to their new environment by substituting materials such as buffalo or cow chips for lumber. They built dugouts or soddies (homes made of sod blocks) instead of frame houses. Their goal was to conquer the "wilderness," not to be conquered by it.

Crops

New and better varieties of wheat, corn, and other crops helped farmers adapt to different regions and to achieve greater yields. Although Kansas is best known for its wheat production, farmers raise many other important crops. Corn, hay, and oats also are important to the state's agricultural history.

Family Farming

Much of a farmer's education happens on the job. Most learn as children how to farm. They start with doing chores and then take greater responsibility for farm work as they grow older. Children as young as age three or four might be expected to help feed chickens or weed gardens. As they grow older, farm kids take on more responsibility. Teenagers do field work, driving either teams of animals of the past or engine-powered equipment today.

Irrigation

Parts of Kansas get more rainfall than others do. Kansas farmers always have had to make decisions about what and where to plant based upon how much water was available. Because of the lack of moisture in many part of Kansas, farmers in those areas had to look for other ways to water their crops.

Water for farming can come from three places: rainfall and other precipitation (rain, snow, sleet), surface water (collected in ponds, lakes, streams, and rivers), groundwater (underground pools or aquifers).

The introduction of the windmill helped farmers tap the underground water supply. "The windmill was like a flag marking the spot where a small victory had been won in the fight for water in an arid land," said Walter Prescott Webb, a Great Plains historian.

Although windmills were used for some irrigation—such as fruits and vegetables--their primary function was pumping water for households and livestock. Windmills were manufactured in several Kansas towns.

During the drought years of the 1890s, more farmers began to tap the underground water supply. Windmill-powered pumps placed groundwater into a reservoir pond. Water could then be run through ditches to the field when needed.

This increased irrigation began to cause problems for lawmakers and state officials. The reduced flow of water in the Arkansas River led to a Kansas-Colorado battle over the limited supply of river water. This legal dispute continues today.

In western Kansas, where water can be more than 100 feet below the surface, more powerful irrigation equipment was needed. The introduction of the internal combustion engine in the early 20th century helped provide the power needed to irrigate this water supply.

In 1920, crops on 95,000 acres of Kansas farmland were being irrigated. Eighty-five percent of that land was located between Dodge City and the Colorado line. Most of the irrigated crops were alfalfa, wheat, and sugar beets.

Livestock

The livestock industry in Kansas has long been important to the state's agricultural economy. This industry includes cattle drives, packinghouses, and large ranches. Raising and caring for various kinds of animals has long been a vital part of the general farm industry. Mixed farming (grain and livestock) is the predominant form of agriculture in the state. Cows, chickens, hog, horses, and mules have all been present in the history of the family farm.

• Hogs

Hogs are an important part of the livestock industry in Kansas. In 1885, the state's hog population reached 3 million head. This meant that there were more than two pigs for every person in the state.

For many years, butchering hogs in the fall of the year was an important farm activity. It often became a community or neighborhood project.

• Sheep

Sheep became important to the Kansas livestock industry during the 1870s and 1880s. Stock sheep numbers reached an all time high in 1884 with 1.27 million head. During the first half of the decade, the population of sheep in the state exceeded that of humans.

• Dairies

During the state’s early years virtually every farm had at least one milk cow. Farm women often supplemented the family income by selling extra butter to local merchants. In 1884, nearly 24 million pounds of butter were produced. Before the end of the decade, there were more than 650,000 milk cows on Kansas farms.

• Work Animals

Work animals made up a vital segment of the livestock population on all farms well into the 20th century. Although oxen were fairly common in the 19th century, horses and mules were the primary source of power.

• Poultry

Poultry products are also important to the Kansas farm economy. In 1903, producers throughout the state sold 6.5 million dollars worth of poultry and eggs.

• Cattle Drives

Joseph McCoy and others led the way in making several Kansas towns railheads for Texas cattle drives during the years following the Civil War. In 1867, Abilene became the state's first major cattle town.

Thousands of head of cattle were shipped on trains from railheads in Kansas to packing plants in Kansas City, Chicago, and other cities to the east. Between 1867 - 1885, towns like Abilene, Ellsworth, Wichita, Newton, and Dodge City became famous for their place in this industry. Stock trains transported cattle to other stockyards around the nation.

Methods & Technology

Before the Civil War, most farm work was being done with simple hand tools in much the same way it had been accomplished for centuries. By the end of World War I, gasoline tractors were beginning to take over as the primary source of power on the nation's farms. The mechanization of American agriculture, which in large part took place between 1865 - 1920, brought important and far reaching social, cultural, and economic changes to rural America.

A farmer and three workhorses pulling a one-bottom walking plow could break only about two acres in one day. With a two-bottom, 4 or 5 horse-drawn sulky, the farmer could plow five to seven acres.

In drier regions such as the High Plains of western Kansas, farmers used a subsurface packer to pack the ground beneath the surface. This dry farming method was designed to preserve badly needed moisture.

When a farmer's crops ripened, the hard work began. A wheat farmer needed more workers and special equipment for only a short period of time. So neighbors worked together, sharing their labor and harvesting machinery. Thirty men or more worked as a group, going from one farm to the next. They moved the large steam engines and threshing machines as they went, until all the ripe crops were harvested.

Kansas farmers worked to cultivate large tracts of prairie land. They welcomed machinery to help plow the large, open prairie. The first farm machines were powered by animals (oxen, horses, or mules) and later by steam or gasoline engines. A single farmer was able to do the work of several men and operate much larger farms. In the Kansas wheat fields, farmers advanced from the cradle scythe to the combine within 75 years after the Civil War.

From plowing through harvesting, farming underwent a technological revolution. Sulky plows first appeared commercially during the 1860s. Within 25 years they were in wide use and were a major factor in cultivating the prairie.

Kansas farmer/mechanic Charles Angell developed a one-way disc plow that was designed especially for High Plains wheat farming. Unlike the traditional moldboard plow, it did not turn over the soil and bury the surface trash. The Angell plow tilled the soil while incorporating the trash or stubble into the top layer. The stubble then served as mulch that conserved moisture, reduced wind erosion, and increased the humus content of the soil.

The internal combustion engine revolutionized agriculture and transportation in the United States. Tractors, powered by gasoline engines, first appeared in the 1890s, but they were large, heavy, and slow. Improved multi-use tractors were available by 1916, and during the years after World War I they became the dominant power source on American farms. Like early automobiles, the first gasoline tractors were made by many different companies and came in all shapes and sizes.

Early Kansas settlers dropped corn behind the sod breaking plow and cultivated it with a hoe. In the early 1870s farmers used grain drills to sow wheat. The lister, an implement called the "Lazy Man's Machine," opened furrows for corn planting on unplowed ground. A lister with a drill planted the seed as the furrow was opened, allowing the farmer to plow and plant at the same time. Faster listers could plant two rows at a time.

"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."

Horses and mules powered early mechanical threshers that harvested the crops. By the 1870s portable steam engines were available. During the 1880s, large steam engines powered threshing machines and became common throughout the wheat belt. They were an indispensable part of the harvest scene for many years.

Since most farmers could not afford their own steam engine, they often hired custom crews to do this work for them.

Gasoline powered combines first appeared in Kansas during the 1910s. A Wichita man developed a successful prairie type in 1912. During the 1920s combines, first pull and then self-propelled, became popular. In Kansas, the first self- propelling combine was put into use near Hutchinson in 1923. Although the older methods of binding, shocking, and threshing, with stationary equipment, continued beyond World War II, more farmers began to shift to labor saving combines during the 1930s.

Although combines were a big financial investment for farmers, they saved time and money by eliminating the labor needed to shock (or bundle) the wheat. In 1938 production of the combine surpassed that of the binder, and replaced it entirely within a decade. A combine could harvest an acre of wheat in an hour-and-a-half or less, where the older methods required four to six hours.

The first important corn picker was patented in 1880, but the machine did not become commercially successful until the early 1900s. This was just one of many technological advances made in the production of corn during the post-Civil War era. Although mechanization had little impact on total corn yield per acre, the man-hours required decreased greatly.

In 1840 it took one farmer 276 hours to produce 100 bushels of corn. With mechanization, the time was cut nearly in half by the end of the century. During the 1950s, it took only 23 hours to produce the same 100 bushels.

Cattle

"The Great Blizzard" of January 1886 helped transform the cattle industry in Kansas. During this storm cattle became lost and drifted, some for hundreds of miles. They died by the tens of thousands. The losses on some ranches in storm areas were as high as 80 percent. After this great disaster, many ranchers decided that the open range system would no longer work in Kansas.

Once the buffalo had been hunted to near extinction and the long drives had come to an end, Kansas became one of the country's leading cattle states. The state ranked third in the nation in cattle population by 1890, a position it held for several decades.

With the closing of the open range, Kansas cattlemen began to breed better stock. Shorthorns and Herefords were popular in the 1890s. One rancher working for better stock was Frank Rockefeller, the brother of John D. Rockefeller of Standard Oil. He owned a Kiowa County cattle ranch of over 12,000 acres, which specialized in purebred Herefords.

To protect their interests from threats by rustlers and homesteaders, ranchers formed large stock growers associations. These organizations gave the big cattlemen considerable control over the industry.

In addition to the large-scale ranchers, medium-sized and small farmers throughout the state contributed to the growth of the beef cattle industry.

Storage

On farms root cellars were used to hold vegetables and fruits such as potatoes and fresh apples and pears. These foods would keep many months in cool, dark cellars. Bigger harvests of grain and hay were stored in barns, silos, corncribs, or hay sheds on the farm.

There were many advances in harvesting and storing grain and fodder. Many changes occurred before the Civil War. The process was revolutionized during the late 1800s. Improved mowing machines, rakes, balers, and other devices helped reduce the time and manpower required for harvest and to storage.

F. Wyatt of Hoxie invented the Jayhawk Stacker in the late 1890s. This machine, which could lift 700 pounds of hay to a height of 23 feet, was first sold in 1903. Wooden stackers sold for $68 while steel ones cost $88.

Prior to the first field pick-up baler in 1932, hay was mown, racked, and stacked near the stationary baling machinery. Several farm hands would use pitchforks to move the hay from the stack and then operate the equipment. Between 1865 - 1914, most hay was still stored outdoors in haystacks. Today hay is baled for storage in barns or packed tightly in large weatherproof bales and left outside.

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