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History of agriculture in Americas

29 topics: The history of maize and Mesoamerican agriculture; Cacao in Amazonia: Growers, Beverages and Early Exchange; Andean agriculture: terraces, raised…

The history of maize and Mesoamerican agriculture: c. 7000 BCE, Mesoamerica · southern Mexico. Generations of selection transform teosinte into a crop that will underpin many economies across the Americas.
Cacao in Amazonia: Growers, Beverages and Early Exchange: approximately 5,300 years ago · Ecuadorian evidence, Santa Ana–La Florida, Palanda, Ecuador; later South America and Mesoamerica. Starch, theobromine and DNA document early cacao use, while further studies reveal agricultural networks of exchange.
Andean agriculture: terraces, raised fields and farming across elevations: 1st millennium BCE–16th century · selected pre-Columbian systems, Central and southern Andes · Peru and Bolivia. How Andean communities combined hillside terraces, raised fields, diverse crops and food storage.
Hohokam Canals: Farming the Sonoran Desert: c. 450–1450 CE · irrigation traditions are much older, Salt and Gila valleys, present-day Arizona, USA. Canal networks connected fields, settlements and shared work in the Sonoran Desert; their transformation did not mean the disappearance of its peoples.
Terra Preta: How Amazonian Communities Changed Their Soils: Seventh century CE · Osvaldo example; origins much earlier, Amazonia: Brazil, Bolivia and other parts of the basin. Settlement deposits, charcoal and organic inputs reveal how Amazonian communities created and used enduring fertile soils.
Chinampas in the Basin of Mexico: farming between fields and canals: c. 900–1521 · pre-Hispanic development; cultivation continued afterwards, Basin of Mexico · Xochimilco and Xaltocan. The history of fixed raised fields linking food production with water transport and the transformation of wetlands.
Norse farms in Greenland: c. AD 985–15th century, Southwestern Greenland. Husbandry and hunting formed an integrated provisioning system; settlement decline reflects overlapping pressures rather than a simple failure to adapt.
Caribbean sugar plantations: production, enslavement and landscape: 17th–19th centuries · Barbados's transformation from the 1640s, Caribbean · Barbados as the principal case study. Fields, mills and boiling houses connected through coerced labour, capital and Atlantic commerce.
Breadfruit reaches Saint Vincent and Jamaica: 1793; Oceanian cultivation much earlier, Tahiti → Saint Vincent and Jamaica. The Providence expedition carried breadfruit to British Caribbean colonies. Plants previously selected in Oceania became part of local food traditions.
Cotton ginning and the plantation economy: 1793–1794; consequences in the nineteenth century, Savannah area, Georgia, USA; Atlantic connections. Whitney’s design and subsequent improvements changed cotton processing within an economy connected to industry, slavery and Indigenous land dispossession.
The history of agricultural mechanisation: 1831 CE · McCormick reaper demonstration, USA · Virginia; later manufacturing in Chicago. Mechanical grain harvesting becomes a symbol of nineteenth-century changes in farm labour.
The Guano Boom: Peru and the Global Fertiliser Trade: from c. 1840 · expansion in the mid-nineteenth century, Chincha Islands, Peru; routes to Europe and North America. A marine ecosystem supplied nutrients to distant farms. Export expansion linked soil fertility with coerced labour, state finance and the depletion of accumulated deposits.
Buffalo elevators and bulk grain handling: 1842–1843; development in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Buffalo, Lake Erie, New York, USA. Dart and Dunbar’s enterprise connected mechanical grain lifting with port storage; later development involved railways, quality standards and labour organisation.
Chicago Board of Trade: Grain, Contracts and Market Rules: From 1848 · standardisation and oversight in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Chicago, Illinois, United States; agricultural hinterlands and international commerce. Quality grades, warehouse documents and futures contracts changed how grain was sold and how price exposure was distributed.
Langstroth’s hive and movable frames: 1851–1853; patent 5 October 1852, Philadelphia, United States; European beekeeping traditions. Movable frames supported repeated inspection and the reuse of sound comb; a patent and manual helped circulate the system.
The Homestead Act of 1862: Farms, Ownership and the Costs of Settlement: 1862 · applications began in 1863, United States; example: near Beatrice, Nebraska. Conditional land grants helped establish farms, but required capital and labour and formed part of a wider history of Indigenous dispossession.
The Morrill Act of 1862: Colleges, Experiments and Agricultural Extension: 2 July 1862; institutional development through 1914, United States; federal legislation in Washington, DC. Land grants supported colleges; later laws connected teaching, research and extension. Expansion also involved Indigenous dispossession and racial segregation.
Barbed wire and agriculture’s new boundaries: 24 November 1874: Glidden’s patent; development from the 1860s, DeKalb, Illinois; the US plains and wider technological circulation. Glidden’s patent helped industrialise fencing, supporting crop protection and grazing control while intensifying disputes over land.
The ladybird that helped save California citrus: 1888–1889; subsequent research and development, California, especially the Los Angeles area; insects obtained from Australia. Introducing a natural enemy of cottony cushion scale became a famous crop-protection success whose mechanisms and limitations were studied for decades.
From Gros Michel to Cavendish: Crisis and the Banana Trade: Late nineteenth century–1960s · a prolonged transition, Central America and the Caribbean; connections to importing markets. The Gros Michel crisis required changes in cultivars, packaging and transport, reshaping production networks and work in exporting regions.
Soil Survey: putting soils on the map: 1899: initial field season; 1900: collected report, United States: Cecil County, the Connecticut and Salt Lake valleys, and Pecos. Federal investigation and state cooperation developed soil mapping, while successive researchers revised concepts of profiles, classification and map interpretation.
Marquis Wheat and the Saunders Programme: 1892–1916; pure planting in 1904, Ottawa and prairie stations, Canada. Red Fife and Hard Red Calcutta, successive selections, field trials and the distribution of Marquis seed.
Hybrid Maize: From Experimental Plots to the Seed Industry: 1908–1940s; widespread adoption by 1960, United States: Cold Spring Harbor, Connecticut and the Corn Belt. Controlled crosses, field experiments and specialised seed production changed how American farmers obtained planting material and assessed new varieties.
Ejidos and Agrarian Reform in Mexico: 1911–1993; constitution 5 February 1917, Mexico; Querétaro, La Laguna and ejidal communities. From revolutionary land claims through Cárdenas’s reforms to rights certification: institutions combining household parcels with common resources.
The Dust Bowl: Drought, Soil Erosion and Agricultural Change: 1930s, Great Plains, United States. Repeated drought, exposed soils and economic distress produced dust storms, migration and a lasting expansion of public soil conservation.
Rural Electrification: How the REA Changed American Farm Life: 1935–1936 · REA established and legislation enacted, Washington, DC, and rural areas of the United States. Public credit, cooperatives and new distribution networks changed food production and the everyday work of farming households.
Silent Spring: agriculture and ecological responsibility: 1962 publication; 1963 report; 1972 EPA decision, Silver Spring, Maryland; a US debate with wider influence. Rachel Carson’s book accelerated debate over pesticides in the environment, risk investigation and the organisation of crop protection.
Cerrado: Research, Soybeans and Landscape Change: Since the 1970s; Embrapa 1973, CPAC 1975, Brazil; Planaltina and different parts of the Cerrado biome. Soil science, plant breeding and bacteria combined with credit and infrastructure to reshape production, social relationships and Cerrado ecosystems.
Precision Agriculture: GPS, Sensors and Yield Maps: 1980s–early twenty-first century; GPS milestones: 1995 and 2000, United States, Europe and Australia; example centre: Ames, Iowa. Satellite navigation, yield mapping and machine control connect observations with decisions for different parts of a field.