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To begin this lecture Dr. Isern started by explaining to us the 4 Point Model that he felt applied to this lecture. The four points of the model were Cultural Heritage, I, the Metropolis and Technology; he used these to explain to us how each impacted agriculture on the plains. We talked about crop monocultures and prairie polycultures. What the first explorers thought was virgin landscape was actually manipulated by the natives there. Agriculture tends to induce monocultures, which are really hard to create. Monocultures come with high risk and are not that stable because growing monocultures of crops or grasses is like putting all your eggs in one basket. If it fails or the soil develops some sort of disease, you are in trouble. Whereas polycultures are much more stable. If one thing fails, there are others there to pick up the slack. Crops are a type of monoculture and are unstable, prairies on the other hand are polycultures and much more diverse and stable. Prairie is also very resilent, if you leave it alone it will eventually get back to the way it originally was. Next, we talked about pioneer farming as Jeffersonian Agrarianism. People eventually started to think of the plains not as the Great American Desert, but as the Great Interior Valley and the Garden of the World. They saw what the plains potentially could be, that it's not as bad as everyone said and that it has the potential to be The Garden of the World. Why the sudden change in attitude? Some people say "The rain follows the plow". Some people think that the prairies lacked moisture because they lacked trees. The roots of trees turn the soil and release the moisture from the ground into the air, which brings more rain. Not everyone believes this is true, but it’s a possibility.