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Lecture 7, The Farmer isthe Man, was a lecture about the agriculture industry on the Great Plains. In the lecture it was discussed about the different plant types that were found throughout and the different type of planting. As one can notice while driving through the Great Plains, there are certain plants that are accepted more by the land than others. Many farms have large fields of wheat (many varieties), corn, and beans, because that is what was proven to be accepted by the land. The techniques of farming went through just as many trials and errors that the crop choices have. Through attempting dry farming, and then later moving on to using different windmills, well systems, and irrigation techniques; the best were found. Understanding the different ways, through ground irrigation to those scary contraptions that you see in the fields shooting water, was a bit hard for me, but I know what the end goal was, and that is all that matters. Also discussed were the weed invasion, and the hard times that the Dust bowl created to the farmers.


This lecture interested me because coming from a farm family, I thought what we did was just what we did. I never asked questions for why we irrigated the way we did. I never thought that there would be a reason for why we rotate the crops, or even have the crops that we do. I guess there is a lot more that goes into farming than I thought there was.