American Agriculture: From Farm Families to Agribusiness

Written from the perspective of ordinary people, this book traces the history of agriculture in the United States from early colonists until today. The first concise history of American agriculture in 25 years, the author focuses attention on recent developments such as the decline of tobacco, green revolution, farm-to-table, and food security.

Mark V. Wetherington is Senior Research Fellow and former Director of The Filson Historical Society. He served as the director of historical societies in Tennessee, South Carolina, and Kentucky for thirty years. Holding a Ph.D. from the University of Tennessee, he writes on rural and environmental history as well as the Civil War and Reconstruction. His books The New South Comes to Wiregrass Georgia 1860-1910 (1994) explore longleaf pine deforestation, landscape change, and the expansion of the cotton South onto the Coastal Plains during the late nineteenth century, while Plain Folk’s Fight: The Civil War and Reconstruction in Piney Woods Georgia (2005), explored the home front experiences of yeoman households during the 1860s and 1870s. He is the author of numerous articles and book reviews. His current research interests focus on the ways environmental change altered the relationships of farming families to landscapes and markets in the longleaf pine and wiregrass South. He has received a Mellon fellowship at the Virginia Historical Society, has served on Agricultural History’s Vernon Carstensen Memorial Award Committee, and serves on the editorial board of the University Press of Kentucky.