ABSTRACT
The transition in American agriculture from the Jeffersonian self-sufficient yeomen farmer to the capital-intensive, technical business began well before the Civil War but was given significant impetus by the Civil War and the passage of the Morrill Act of 1862 creating land-grant universities in all states. Mechanical innovations, beginning with the patenting of the cast iron plow by Jethro Wood in 1819, followed by John Deere's development of the steel plow, made tillage of soil easier. The development of the first grain reaper and the first practical threshing machine set the stage for replacing manual labor with capital investment in the form of machinery. Science power in agriculture began to have an impact in the 1930s with the adoption by farmers of hybrids corn even though the system for producing hybrids seed corn was developed by Donald F. Jones in 1918. Agriculture is much broader than what occurs within the farm gate.
