This content explores the history of the United States through the lens of agriculture, demonstrating how agricultural development, trade, and related regulations have fundamentally shaped the nation's economy, laws, and societal structure.
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and after my
my
1.5 second break
so what do i want to say about history
i'm going to go through a lot of things
and i'm going to go through it fairly quickly
i've
made a lot of things bold
it's bold i really want you to pay
attention or if i speak about it at any
length pay attention to what i say
the things that are important i
generally say or make it bold in some
way call your attention to
you are responsible to read this stuff
not just listen to me and ignore
the pages
um i'm not going to read this to you i'm
not going to say
anything about the viewpoint of this
this is strictly a cut and dry look at
the united states history through the
lens of what was going on with agriculture
agriculture
i'm not going to talk about imperialism settlement
settlement
social issues with the native americans or
or
anything like that that's a different
class and i don't want to get
sidetracked we have too much to talk about
about
really important issues really important
in our history but i'm gonna
be looking through the straw
looking at agriculture and things that
affect ag business
so essentially north america became this
refuge became this place
where you were quote free
and to do what you wanted um
freedom of religion freedom to have your
own communities and
it was a different mentality from again
a european settler standpoint that brought
the uh
the bulk of people
here that formed what we now know as the
united states
and so it was all about agriculture
hunting producing crops timber meat hides
hides
the one thing that's not there is
fisheries and all of those are agriculture
agriculture
timber which is lumber building wood
that is agriculture forest management
and timber is agriculture
cows pigs sheep
agriculture wool from sheep that's agriculture
agriculture um
um hunting
hunting
that's agriculture trapping beavers
that's agriculture all of those things
are considered agriculture we forget
about a lot of the broader sense of what
is agriculture
the pants i'm wearing are made of cotton
these pants are agriculture the table
i'm sitting at is wood this table is
agriculture okay uh
uh
there really wasn't much
except agriculture
in the early united states
there were small businesses you know you
have the the saloon the tavern or the
uh churches and the um
local stores
so there are businesses to support
things that uh
could arguably arguably be
not part of agriculture but the vast
majority of the early u.s was
supply and demand tells us that farms
and farming methods improved the supply
of food increased prices sag
a lot of people growing a lot of people farming
farming
you got too many people
learning how to do things learning to do
a pretty good job getting better at it
and all of a sudden boom
you got a whole lot of product
and the ability to sell that product to
somebody becomes
more difficult
so fewer people are needed on farms
the production farmers to non-farmers or
take three the proportion of farmers to
non-farmers declined so there are fewer
farmers needed to support the population
and we've been going on that downhill
trend since
probably the
and the history of the regulation
is really intertwined with agriculture
in a big way
laws and regulations in the united states
states
is a history of agriculture
until we get to modern times where it
doesn't feel like it is anymore
but essentially all of a sudden this
huge increase in farming production in
this new powerhouse of agriculture and
trade as we were trading with
other countries
we were trading with
partners north and south of us as well
as back in the european
european
uh homeland for a lot of the people who
were here um
um
even though i
i understand that looking at the
u.s history from a european perspective is
something that bothers a lot of people
it is the reality of what happened
in agriculture and trade it is that
relationship that brought the people
here and created the economic trade
that grew
to become the united states
now all of a sudden we have this
fledgling country that's getting
many fewer farmers than
originally were needed before everybody
was a farmer or somehow connected to
farming and now you can do other
businesses and other jobs and
and um you can have the
this blacksmith and the um
um
textile maker and the
dressmaker and you know all the other
things that are needed to create a community
but also
there's no
laws there's no regulations for all of
this it's kind of
i guess
it's not really a good way of putting
but the wild west of of
of
growing things there are no rules so
so [Music]
[Music]
a lot of things started to happen to
put into place some basic
laws and regulations some rules the
country realized that were
our country's success is really on the
backs of agriculture our economic power
is our grain and our cost and our trade
ability to take this agricultural
product and
trade it for value and
uh and
and
you can't separate
separate
agriculture in the history of the united
states from the wars that occurred
during the formation of this country the
revolutionary war the mexican war
really established
the start of what the united states was
going to be [Music]
[Music]
it created
the land that we call the united states largely
largely
and so what do you now have
more need for more agriculture
and more demand for more products people need
need
horses and they need their horses to be
shot they need
wagons they need clothes they need
cups and plates and shovels and
all kinds of things
and so now there's industry
industry
and you gotta feed everybody you gotta
clothe everybody so this industry is
primarily still
agriculture with supporting things
things
you also have all of these young men
they're also the women that are uh
uh crucial
crucial
to these
wartimes that are doing
unsung work the backbone of work to
to help
the young men who are
out there
then what was it 1849
go 49ers
1849 the big gold rush the famous gold
rush and that just
exploded more growth
the civil war boom
boom
huge impact
in terms of
land rules agriculture
popular and political views and the
president and his his administration
also define the shape
our defined and shaped laws and regulations
regulations
in agriculture and in other fields that
affect agriculture so for example
president woodrow wilson
signed laws establishing the parameters
of the department of labor and its functions
functions
franklin roosevelt signed many economic
and social measures during the depression
depression
president richard nixon signed the clean
air act clean water act and endangered
species act so the most
powerful fundamental foundation of our
laws that are
to protect the environment were signed under
under
by the republican president nixon and i
think a lot of people think that
uh you know environmental laws it's all a
democratic kind of
an issue
arguably today that is certainly largely
true but
back in
the days of richard nixon he's the one who
who
was in that chair who signed
those three
foundational laws that exist today
which protect our environment
so don't get caught up in
red versus blue right versus left
republican versus democrat
those are important issues to talk about
but it is a moving fluid
issue over time
lots of things change within those discussions
from its beginning the usda was
dedicated to assisting farmers
as the population became better informed
and more literate meaning ability to
read and write
more affluent they had more money it
turned its attention to rules that would
protect itself
the late 1800s and early 1900s saw more
information published through the growth
of newspapers etc
etc and
and
so there's this huge foundation
of laws that created the usda that
created some rules for
uh agriculture and trade that created
the ability of agriculture because it is
the powerhouse the
the united states recognized that its
position in the world as a country that
mattered in the world depended on other
countries having confidence in our
product and the willingness to buy and
trade for our product
in order to do that we had to
have the laws and regulations and
enforcement to say that yeah we've got
and it worked
and we became a very successful
agricultural trade powerhouse
in the world
but after this initial period lawmakers
began to enact laws to regulate
businesses particularly in regard to the
quality of product and selling of those products
products
really to
this
not only image but the reality that we have
have
good product
we regulate control
control
and standardize our product in a way
that makes
trade international trade and interstate trade
trade
something that is dependable
the appearance of federal laws
regulating agriculture and related
businesses follows a certain pattern
so an early rush
in the 1800s up to world war one
with some trailing creation of laws in
the 1920s so that's the
the foundational regulation the
beginning the getting things started
started
there was very very little
done prior
to the civil war there wasn't much in place
place
so a whole bunch was done late eighteen
hundreds up to world war one
then the depression era now all of a
sudden it's like wow we need to shore up
the economy we need to fix
fix
things to help out our farmers
agricultural improvements and laws
supporting research and development
increased during and after world war ii and
and
that was a
an era of an explosion in research and
understanding and science
we understood that we needed to compete
in order to not be swallowed up during
world war ii we needed to develop
better ways of doing things better ways
to make rubber better ways to grow crops
better ways to
to
design and build a tractor everything
everything
material science
agricultural science
uh chemistry
explored in whole new ways
in the years just prior to
and through world war ii and then it
continued on afterward um
um
so we get into the 1950s
and 60s
it was this post-war growth and
prosperity period for the united states
again that's
looking through a very very far away
lens we're looking at it as the
country's economy is growing as we're
developing new methods and sciences
exploding and [Music]
[Music]
you get in closer and you realize
there's all kinds of problems socially
not everybody is writing that prosperity
and growth
curve a lot of people are not huge
amounts of
social injustices going on but
at the
higher level just looking at the growth
of the country
it was huge
the idea that we have this romanticized
image of the 50s and 60s that
there was opportunity for
everyone maybe everyone didn't
get it but there was opportunity and
there was growth and there was money
there was this new thing that never
existed before called the middle class
that was new
and arguably the the middle class did
start largely during the industrial
world war ii but
the idea of a recognized large middle
and without getting into the social injustice
injustice and
and
disparities between different groups in
the country it certainly was an area an
area of growth an era of growth with
with
a new thing to aspire to the middle class
prosperity combined with increasing
environmental awareness produced a spurt
of environmental laws
in the late 60s and the 70s so it's not
just the environment that was a huge
change but it also continued with
worker safety worker rights and
and
things of that sort
and it put a lot of new requirements on
farmers during those 60s and 70s that's
the environmental era
by the 80s the basic laws were largely
in place and the focus shifted to
regulatory implementation and to
amendments to establish law fixing
things making it work modernizing
modernizing
adding detail to the regulation that was
so
1860s farmers made up 58 of the labor force
force by
by
1862 the usda was created by
president lincoln who signed it into law
the same year the moral land grant
college act
was authorized
so there are lots of land grant colleges
they exist to this day
based on this
effort to create
create
universities and organizations of higher learning
learning
focused primarily on agriculture
agricultural research and agricultural
learning the homestead act past
encouraging new settlement trying to increase
increase
settlement and need for agriculture
moving or pushing
uh and as i mentioned before
i'm going to make certain things bold
and i'm going to skip some things if i
skip something
pause and read it
so if the gainfully employed persons 47.4
47.4
were engaged in agriculture in 1807.
that's the first time in american
history that farmers were less than 50
percent based on data
data
being collected at the time
and so it was a shift prior to the 1870s
there were more farmers than anything else
else
and some points it was a lot more
and we crossed paths about 1870
where farmers are less now farmers are
way less than half of the population um
um
1875 civil rights act of 1875 some
people think civil rights well isn't
that something that occurred
in the 1960s uh
uh
yeah there's a lot of civil rights acts
not a lot but there's several
and the first one uh
uh
1875 the reconstruction era law to
protect all citizens
in their civil and legal rights did it have
have
sufficient impact oh hell
no in many forms you know here we are
post civil war but in many forms slavery
different models different names but it
we had more civil rights that'll be
coming up
uh so here's agriculture in terms of the
growth domestic product
you can see that agriculture is going
down not because it's literally going
down in value this is a percentage
if it was value agriculture would be
going up
but as a percentage it's going down
because industry
is taking up more
more
not a whole lot more but industry is
taking up more
in uh modern times again this is not the
whole history of the united states this
is the history of
of
more modern period
but it's the services industry
in more recent years so this is what's
going on now
now
services industry is exploding in many
ways uh industries increasing
to a
smaller extent
and that's been taking um
um
the percentage of the total gross
domestic product
for the economic
earnings of the country
so 1880
1880 [Music]
[Music]
state board of viticulture
gotta love those wine guys 1883
methods developed to detect food adulteration
adulteration
which is a precursor to the food pure
food and drug act
something that's very important again a
food adulteration is adding
something changing something doing
something that would be unhealthy and sanitary
sanitary and
and uh
very important to have
economic power
if you don't
have the the ability to guarantee that
products are
safe unadulterated
it's you're not going to get there so
this is again a foundation in the late 1800s
1800s
for pure food 1889 department of
agriculture is given cabinet status what
does that mean if you're given cabinet status
status
that means you have a person a
leader your main
leader for your group
is in the president's cabinet you are
one of the people who
is a direct advisor directly to the
president of the united states
so that means that the department of
agriculture the usda hasn't
hasn't
has a director a leader that is
appointed by the president
when a new president comes in they can
either keep the same one if the person
is somebody they want or they can
appoint their own person and that person
then has
personal private
one-on-one ability to communicate
directly with the president of the
united states it's a big deal
agriculture is that big of a deal
uh biological control used to control
cottony cushion scale on citrus and
california so we think that bio control
methods is something that's very modern but
but
the concept of biological control
1890 the sherman antitrust act so
the the sherman antitrust act means that
businesses are not allowed to come
together to collaborate
collaborate
to do things that would fix prices or somehow
somehow
monopolize the market take advantage of
if you are
a company that's way too big you control
the market you can be broken up into
smaller pieces or
if you have
you know three oil companies that
control ninety percent of the market and
they decide to get together and fix
prices well who who can do anything
about it
so they artificially inflate prices
based on a conversation that happened
over a cigar and brandy in the back room
is that fair no
has it happened sure
now it's illegal you get caught doing
that kind of thing
the sherman anti-trust act
uh
1899 california pioneered the fight to
keep the mexican fruit fly out of the
united states so we've been battling
insects from
other areas trying to inspect crops and
keep things out for uh
1905.
let me take another quick break right back
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