Explanation: A rare bit of OC from me!
George Washington, whatever his other faults, certainly imagined himself a ‘modern’ and rational man. While that Washington owned and operated a farm (with slaves, as was unfortunately common in Virginia at the time) is common knowledge, less commonly known is the effort he put in to make it a ‘modern’ and rational operation based on the latest practices imported from Britain. No mere fads - these were cutting-edge techniques that had made British agriculture the envy of Europe, dealing with everything from grain processing to the layout of fields to the proper rotation of crops to maintain soil fertility.
The last of these was of particular importance to Washington, who despised and disdained the ‘American’ process of farming at the time, especially that of his fellow planter elites, whose practices of monocropping cotton and tobacco utterly ruined the long-term fertility of their land. Washington, himself something of an obsessive workaholic, regarded the practices of his fellow American farmers as ‘slovenly’ and ignorant outside of New England and Pennsylvania - not entirely incorrectly - leading to a slow but inevitable ruin of the land and the reduction of the once-bountiful yields that characterized American farming. He hoped that, by his example, he could make other farmers see that a modern and rational basis for agriculture was the way forward.
Unfortunately, his fellow American farmers had an ace up their sleeve - westward expansion. While westward expansion had always been an interest of American colonists, the combination of increased population density and declining soil fertility made the westward push ever-more-important to American farmers. Once the land back east is ruined, why not ruin ‘virgin’ land out west to recover your profitability? This, unfortunately, was a sentiment which was itself strengthened by the revitalization of slavery and the profitability of cotton monocropping around ~1800 AD by the invention of the cotton gin.
While Washington himself was very far from an ally of Native Americans, and generally a supporter of westward expansion, the difference in intensity and interest is telling - Washington sought an integration of Native Americans into the new polity of the USA, albeit from a paternalistic and assimilationist position, and even decades later Washington was remembered fondly by some Native American polities for his (relatively, and for a white man - both important qualifiers) fair dealings with them as president. Later westward expansion, however, was predicated explicitly on pushing the Native Americans out - it was the land which was desired for seizure by private individuals for profit, not some abstract notion of enlarging and strengthening the polity.
Very tellingly, after Washington’s death, his estate fell into disrepair by the 1830s because of the disinterest of later Virginians in his imported innovations. It was noted in the early-mid 1800s that, rather than crop rotation, Southern planters practiced a form of wasteful ‘land rotation’ wherein half the fields were left fallow - something which was cutting edge in the 4th fucking century BCE, maybe, but not so much at the dawn of the industrial revolution.
The primitive state of American agriculture in the South and West would continue even after the death of chattel slavery after the 1860s, with the US Civil War - one of the early experiments in Southern crop rotation was in the 18 fucking 90s. In the same period, George Washington Carver (a Black man - unrelated to the white Washington), advocated crop rotation with the peanut to restore soil fertility. Such ‘modern’ practices still were not wholly rooted in the South or the West by the 1930s - at which point the prolonged and ruinous standard of US agriculture resulted in the total agricultural and environmental collapse of the Dust Bowl.
… should have just fucking listened to Washington, guys. Either one.
One thing that absolutely baffles me is that crop rotation is not even modern, there are some 3000-4000 years old laws in the Bible telling to do it, including letting the land “rest” every 7 years.
That would be a variant of letting the land lay fallow - the system followed by the Southern planters of the early-mid 1800s.
But yes, basic crop rotation was not cutting edge - three-field rotation had been practiced for nearly a thousand years in Europe by that point, and four-field rotation (allowing full use of all the land while maintaining or increasing fertility) for around a hundred years.
But what about the slightly reduced short-term profits from not growing all cotton on the land!? Won’t someone think of the slightly reduced short-term profits!? 😭
I don’t know how it is in the US nowadays, but here in Brazil monoculture is a terrible issue; if it weren’t for modern fertilizers a significant part of agricultural land would be completely barren.
Yeah, the advent of artificial fertilizers has allowed many places, including many in the USA, to revert to monocultures.
While some farming practices have improved and remain improved, like systems for land and water retention, monoculture is only sustainable as long as the supply of artificial fertilizer - at a profitable price - remains steady. And even then, artificial fertilizers have other drawbacks - including environmental damage from overflow (especially algal blooms) and the consumption of mined phosphates - a limited resource.
Just like Western lands were a limited resource. Will we ever learn?
Gods help us
Well holy fuck that is insane. Didn’t really know anything about the dust bowl, but of course it was because of gross negligence and incompetence by white people.
Yeah, just really ridiculous standards for agriculture that wouldn’t have passed muster anywhere else. The white settlers really shot themselves (and everyone else in the process) in the face with the idea that they could just reap monocrops forever without taking even basic care (in terms of soil fertility or stability ) of the land they lived and farmed on.
Speaking of native Americans and agricultural practices, this brings to mind the Three Sisters: maize, beans, and squash.
When the three are planted together, intermixed, they support each other and maintain the fertility of the soil. Maize provides upright support for the beans to climb. Squash provides ground cover against weeds. They all use different ratios of key soil nutrients. What’s more, when consumed together, these plants provide all the amino acids needed for high-quality, low-cost vegetarian protein!
I understand that this makes it challenging to harvest large fields and sell each crop individually. And it does nothing for those who produce cotton and tobacco as cash crops. It is a very sustainable way to manage a garden, though!
Jesus, you’d think there wasn’t yet another facet of how outrageously dumb and amoral the US south was. There must have been countless powerful polities that were brought down by declining soil fertility …
Academics: “You know, even medieval peasants practiced three-field crop rotations, because a few short generations will show that monocropping is unsustainable.”
Southern Planters: “Later generations can get fucked, I want a profit now”
Luckily we never had to deal with that short-sighted mentality here in the US again, and certainly not in our current situation
One of the reasons for the Revolutionary War was the restrictions that the UK imposed on the colony’s westward expansion.
