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With fewer jobs, lower wages and no prospects, the threshing machine was the final straw; it would place them on the brink of starvation. The Swing Rioters smashed threshing machines and threatened farmers who had them. The riots were dealt with very harshly. Nine of the rioters were hanged and a further 450 were transported to Australia. [2]
The history of agriculture in the United States covers the period from the first English settlers to the present day. In Colonial America, agriculture was the primary livelihood for 90% of the population, and most towns were shipping points for the export of agricultural products. Most farms were geared toward subsistence production for family use.
The social history of American agriculture (1936) online; Schapsmeier, Edward L., and Frederick H. Encyclopedia of American Agricultural History (Greenwood, 1975) Schob, David E. Hired hands and plowboys: farm labor in the Midwest, 1815-60 (1975), pp. 173–249. Shannon, Fred A. The Farmer's Last Frontier: Agriculture, 1860–1897 (1945) online
The further mechanization of agriculture in the 20th century made possible by the agricultural machinery industry had a huge impact of the economic structure of society. In the developed countries the total labour force engaged in agriculture dropped from about 75% in 1800 to less than 5% late 20th century. [10]
Between 1873 and 1879 British agriculture suffered from wet summers that damaged grain crops. Cattle farmers were hit by foot-and-mouth disease, and sheep farmers by liver rot. The poor harvests, however, masked a greater threat to British agriculture: growing imports of foodstuffs from abroad.
Since that time, self-propelled mechanical harvesters , planters, transplanters and other equipment have been developed, further revolutionizing agriculture. [175] These inventions allowed farming tasks to be done with a speed and on a scale previously impossible, leading modern farms to output much greater volumes of high-quality produce per ...
The main prewar agricultural products of the Confederate States were cotton, tobacco, and sugarcane, with hogs, cattle, grain and vegetable plots. Pre-war agricultural production estimated for the Southern states is as follows (Union states in parentheses for comparison): 1.7 million horses (3.4 million), 800,000 mules (100,000), 2.7 million dairy cows (5 million), 5 million sheep (14 million ...
There were steam engines that moved around on wheels under their own power that were used for supplying temporary power to stationary farm equipment such as threshing machines. These were called road engines, and Henry Ford seeing one as a boy was inspired to build an automobile. [18] Steam tractors were used but never became popular.