The decade since the World War has been in many ways the most extraordinary period in American agriculture. For the first time in the Nation's history, the census of 1925 showed a decrease (since 1920) in crop acreage, in farm animals, in number of farms, and in farm population. Nevertheless, agricultural production increased more rapidly from 1922 to 1926, inclusive, than in any period since 1900, and probably since 1890, when the agricultural occupation of the prairies approached completion.

Originally published in 1986, this volume explores capitalization as an industrialisation indicator and the scale of capitalization in the areas of labor, cropping and in livestock and poultry. Finally the performance of agricultural industrialisation is discussed. This book offers a geographic view of what many consider the ultimate revolution in American agriculture: industrialization. The major technological advances and production increases associated with the process have become a significant event in world agricultural history, and for a long time the great majority of Americans accepted them as natural outcomes of economic and even cultural goals. But for the past thirty to forty years agricultural industrialization has proceeded from "a brisk walk to a dash," and the increased pressure on smaller farmers and farm-workers, as well as on natural resources, has become serious enough to evoke demands from many quarters for regulatory action. Yet compared to the magnitude of the event and the increasing concern, much is still unknown about its regional character and extent.