Farm History

From 1900 to 2000, agriculture in Texas and the nation was transformed by new technology, improved irrigation and farming methods, expanding railroads, experimental breeding, government programs, mechanization, electrification, oil booms, conservation efforts, and information technology. In the early twentieth century, programs such as the Reclamation Act, the Country Life Commission, the federal-state extension service, and the Federal Roads Act aimed to improve rural life, while developments such as hog cholera serum, expanded rail networks, and the Spindletop gusher reshaped farming and the wider economy. From 1920 to 1940, Texas agriculture prospered with cotton, wheat, and corn, but the East Texas Oil Field, drought, and the Dust Bowl pushed many farmers away from the land even as tractors, hybrid seed corn, rural electrification, and new dairy equipment changed farm production. From 1940 to 1960, modernization accelerated during the second American agricultural revolution as rural populations declined, electrification and telephone service spread, Stonewall and Gillespie County developed fruit-growing cooperatives and orchards, pesticide regulation increased, tractors surpassed horses and mules on U.S. farms, and frozen foods altered American diets. From 1960 to 1980, Texas's economy shifted further toward technology-based industries and energy, mechanization and no-tillage farming expanded, railroads declined as trucks, planes, and barges carried more farm goods, and each farmer supplied far more people than before. From 1980 to 2000, recession, low oil prices, and a failing agricultural economy brought hard times, but farmers responded with conservation programs, biotechnology, crop diversification, and information technologies, while Gillespie County's grape and wine industry revived and the World Wide Web opened new tools for marketing and research.

Texas · United States