Modern Texas agriculture evolved from the agriculture of prehistoric Texans and agricultural practices transferred from Europe, Asia, and Africa. Crops native to North America included the food staples corn, beans, and squash, and such diverse vegetables as tomatoes, "Irish" potatoes, chili peppers, yams, peanuts, and pumpkins. Spanish colonists introduced wheat, oats, barley, onions, peas, watermelons, and domestic animals, including cattle, horses, and hogs. Most agriculture before the Civil War involved small, subsistence family farms. The great majority of people were nonslaveholders. Germans established small farms and communities such as New Braunfels, Brenham, and Boerne. Czechs settled heavily in Fayette and Brazos counties. Other settlers streamed in from the South and Midwest and spread across the Blackland Prairies and Cross Timbers of north central Texas by 1860. Advanced cultivation practices, improved plant varieties, the mechanization of agriculture, and the greater availability of capital contributed to both higher yields and increased acreage in cultivation. Bonanza farming and large-scale cattle operations, often funded by foreign investors, developed in Texas in the 1880s. Many of these ventures failed in the depression of the 1890s. New corporate operations developed intermittently after 1900. After the Civil War falling prices, high credit and transportation costs, and after 1893 a national depression, precipitated farm organization and revolt. Although some farmers in the state joined the Grange (the National Grange of the Patrons of Husbandry), first established in 1867 in the Midwest, Texas participation in that group was weak. The Grange sought to impose state regulation on railroad freight rates and grain-elevator charges, to lower credit costs and put more money in circulation, and to reduce tariffs on nonfarm products. Texas farmers began to seek these measures through their own association, the Farmers' Alliance, which originated in Lampasas County in 1872. Under the leadership of Charles W. Macune, the Texas Farmers' Alliance embraced the Grange objectives and stressed the development of farm cooperatives.
The merger of the Texas Farmers' Alliance and the Louisiana Farmers' Union in January 1887 resulted in the creation of the National Farmers' Alliance and Industrial Union of America (better known as the Southern Alliance). This organization grew rapidly throughout the South and into the Midwest. The independent Colored Farmers' Alliance and Cooperative Union was organized in Houston in 1886. These organizations, like the Northern Farmers' Alliance, advocated paper money as legal tender, the unlimited coinage of silver, government control or ownership of railroads and telegraph systems, lower tariffs, a graduated income tax, the Australian or secret ballot, and the direct election of United States senators, as well as expanded public education. The Alliance movement, in turn, led to the organization of a national farmers' political party called the People's party of America or Populist party. Although the party generally failed to achieve its objectives, by the time of its demise after 1896 Populism had began to influence the programs of the major political parties.
Explanation:
•the value of farm goods and changes in
farming costs
•the effects of the law of supply and
demand on farmers
