Talk:History of agriculture in the United States

Proposed deletion
The initial result of the merge discussion on Dust bowl was a simple delete of the article. Since this article references no sources I am inclined to agree. Jminthorne (talk) 03:48, 24 August 2009 (UTC)


 * The article has a source and I shall add another. Dust bowl is not a good title for this topic as that is a purely regional phenomenon. Colonel Warden (talk) 21:04, 29 August 2009 (UTC)


 * You may have a point that dust bowl's title is too limited, but it does contain the same subjects that are discussed in this article. We could discuss a rename of Dust bowl on that talk page. I restored the merger and orphan tags as they still apply; my mistake on the unreferenced tag if I was the one who put it up. The dust bowl talk page has a section for discussion of the merger. Jminthorne (talk) 21:59, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

The initial discussion of a merger actually doesn't make a whole lot of sense, as the essay ties together both this concept and two others. Please note that I advocated deletion of that other piece primarily on the grounds that it was little more than an unencyclopedic and redundant essay on the three topics, not due solely to its overlap with this piece. There's a strong case to be made for the other piece disappearing through AfD, but it makes very little sense to merge the then-linkless orphan with this piece and redirect it here as, again, nothing at all linked to it a week ago. The link that has since been added to Dust Bowl doesn't seem to add much, as both of the other two topics dealt with here are mentioned and linked to there as well. The simple availability of sources to flesh out an essay on this topic here does not necessitate that we do so, and the unencyclopedic, middle-school style of this piece should be grounds enough for deletion under an AfD citing WP:NOT. On a related note, the unsourced web-only encyclopedia linked to as one of the two "sources" here is no more reliable than another Wikipedia entry, and should not be used to bolster a case for retention. MrZaius talk  07:26, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

What's up with the template?
The above is more than a little misleading. The above was simply a suggestion that an AfD may be warranted, not a discussion of deletion itself. I'd recommend stripping away the template lest this be confused with an actual previous AfD should the subject be raised in the future. MrZaius talk  07:29, 31 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Technically I think it's fine to have these outside of a formal AfD, but I see your point. Removed. Jminthorne (talk) 15:50, 31 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Much appreciated, MrZaius  talk  18:00, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Move
This article has been generalised to cover History of agriculture in the United States which seems a good level to covere the topic, as in History of agriculture in India. Colonel Warden (talk) 08:11, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks for doing the move! Jminthorne (talk) 20:38, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

Should we go this route, we might want to merge in and cleanup the prose at Agriculture_in_the_United_States and replace it there with a shorter summary. Both the current version here and the even longer section at the parent that links to this piece via main suffer from an essayist's tone, but they could be salvaged and maintain a separate article's length if done correctly. Also, has anyone added this to the US navboxes yet? (This one in particular.) Seems warranted if we're holding onto this. MrZaius talk  07:35, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Text
Some of the text I added I had originally written for citizendium.org, and I hold the copyright. see Citizendium log for 8 July 2007Rjensen (talk) 02:42, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

incomplete-
Thanks to whomever can tackle this. I did my little bit today --Wuerzele (talk) 02:13, 1 September 2014 (UTC)
 * history of livestock production is missing- crops only
 * history of the 80's farm crisis and since

Vital information missing

 * There is no section on corn, the largest crop in the US.
 * There is no section on soybeans, the largest crop in the US.
 * There is inadequate coverage of fertilizers
 * There is inadequate coverage of irrigation
 * There is inadequate coverage of the Green revolution
 * There is inadequate coverage of mechanization
 * There is inadequate coverage of crop yields, especially for corn, wheat and soybeansPhmoreno (talk) 03:18, 25 January 2015 (UTC)
 * PhmorenoThanks for chiming in. There is a flag that the article is incomplete. Feel free to add.--Wuerzele (talk) 10:33, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

Was wheat a major or the main cash crop? Missing sources for much of the article
There are a lot of language problems in the text. I've done some copyediting, but it's often dangerous guesswork because there is so much unsourced info. For example, did wheat become the main or a major cash crop of farmers on the frontier? The grammatically incorrect and confusing original was "the major".

In addition, it's confusing whether the addition "cash" may perhaps mean that another crop, for example corn, was an even more common crop but perhaps sold less or for less of a profit and perhaps used mostly for feed. --Espoo (talk) 08:25, 1 January 2017 (UTC)


 * I agree that this article has a lot of unsourced content that needs review and possibly a rewrite. The broad topic makes content organization and weighting difficult. For wheat specifically, there is a history section in Wheat production in the United States which may have additional refs. For commercial crops over time, a graph or table might be preferable to scattered inline numbers.Dialectric (talk) 15:01, 1 January 2017 (UTC)