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This lecture called the Farmer is the Man is about the agrarian culture found here on the Great Plains. Dr Isern talked about how most people acquired land was the Homestead act of 1862, from the military, or lotteries and land rushes. Many different groups actually bought their land from directly from the railroad. Wheat is king on the plains. Most areas of the plains grow this crop. Wheat has been found to be adapted to the rough conditions of a continental climate. There are many different varieties of this crop. One variety we talked about in depth was the Kubanka durum that was discovered by Mark Carleton. Carleton was a researcher for the USDA and found that this Kubanka durum was very hardy and stood up to the conditions of the Black Sea region of what is now Ukraine, which has a similar climate to the plains. Carleton brought this back to the US and became popular with farmers. Certain groups brought seeds with them, like the Mennonites and their Turkey Red wheat. These groups flourished until the Dust Bowl hit the plains. The Dust Bowl has been immortalized in our culture as a terrible time for farming, but the aftermath helped to shape modern farming. After the Dust Bowl, irrigation became a viable option for farming. This is a sharp contrast from the concept of dry farming, which was found to be worse for farming. This irrigation also lead to the advent of the meat packing industry on the plains. This allowed for more feed to be raised to marble the cows in a feedlot, and meat packers to process this meat faster.

Will the production of the ethanol become the new feedlots? I think that agriculture will help to feed our need for energy, i.e. fuels like biodieasel and fuel additives like E-85.