American Agriculture: From Farm Families to Agribusiness

American Agriculture tells the story of farming in American from contact between Native Americans and Europeans to the present. Agricultural historian Mark V. Wetherington provide a narrative overview of significant historical trends explored through specific crop regions and their emergence over time. He traces the decline of the family farm that at one time formed the backbone of America’s agrarian culture and the emergence of large industrial farms that overproduce subsidized commodity crops. American Agriculture provides a narrative overview of significant historical trends explored through specific crop regions and their emergence over time. It is interdisciplinary in approach and places the major themes and topics within the broader context of the nation’s history. This book will be essential reading to anyone interesting in the past, present, or future of American farming.

Mark V. Wetherington is a historian and a writer. 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 served on the editorial board of the University Press of Kentucky.