LEARN NC

2.4 Changes in agriculture

The slideshow linked here includes maps showing changes in North Carolina’s agriculture from the eve of the Civil War in 1860 to the present. The maps are drawn from U.S. Census data collected at roughly fifty-year intervals. Each shows the amount of a particular agricultural commodity (a crop, product, or livestock) produced in each of the state’s counties. From them, you can see where various commodities were produced, how much was produced, and how and why the state’s agriculture has changed in the 150 years since.

Between 1910 and 1959, look for the following changes:

  • Loss of farmland, as farmers used new technology to produce more food on fewer acres.
  • A sharp decline in the number of horses, which had been replaced by cars.
  • By 1959, the government no longer bothered to count asses and mules used as draft animals, because tractors had largely replaced them.
  • Most farm products were becoming more heavily concentrated in particular parts of the state best suited to raising them on a larger scale.
map

 

View the maps

Maps drawn from Census of Agriculture data show the impact of geography on North Carolina’s agriculture and changes in farming over time.