In their new book, Creating Abundance: Biological Innovation and American Agricultural Development (Cambridge, 2008), Olmstead and Rhode offer a radically new interpretation of American agricultural development from the late 18th to early 20th century. While earlier scholars have ascribed a central role to mechanization, Olmstead and Rhode argue that dramatic biological gains were made by an army of improving farmers responding to the challenges of insect pests, biological pathogens, new soils and movement into new climatic zones. These gains remained largely hidden because of the way most statistics have been presented and discussed. By teasing out these advances from the historical record, Olmstead and Rhode not only challenge interpretations about the nature of agricultural development in the United States but also open up a whole new research agenda that promises to revitalize the field of agricultural history here and elsewhere.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.
Volume (Year): 46 (2009) Issue (Month): 1 (January) Pages: 160-167 Download reference. The following formats are available: HTML
(with abstract),
plain text
(with abstract),
BibTeX,
RIS (EndNote, RefMan, ProCite),
ReDIF