Howard, James Edgar. But even as late as 1876, when the original legislation was amended to allow for unrestricted access, there were only 26,395 original entries. These individuals claimed 2.3 million of the nine million acres set aside in 1866. Heavily capitalized, with access to thousands, sometime millions, of dollars, these farmers were products of an agribusiness system. } } This fighting apparently caused de Soto to turn the expedition back east, leaving the River Valley.[6]. The Arkansas Grand Prairie. The significance of the changes lay in the speed in which they occurred. The bill did not become law until the third week of June (too late to plant cotton), and the General Land Office was slow to reestablish offices in the seceded states. 107 talking about this. There was some fertile land along the many streams that drained the upland watershed, but these valleys were typically narrow and subject to flooding. The Post Winery has been in the Post family for five generations. When a tribute gift is given the honoree will receive a letter acknowledging your generosity and a bookplate will be placed in a book. // ]]> [CDATA[ Some row crop agriculture is also present in the Arkansas River Valley. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1993. if(inner.style.display === "block") The majority is grown in: Mississippi River Delta region of Eastern Arkansas For more than 150 years, agricultural practices had hardly changed. By the early 1920s, falling prices and rising surpluses created a crisis in rural America as thousands of farmers lost their land to foreclosure and were forced back into tenant farming and sharecropping. For a time in the 1950s and 1960s, timber removal in the Delta became a full-time business. In response to the former slaves need for land, Congress adopted two programs designed to make individual land ownership a priority. Major funding provided by the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation. Populism in Arkansas. MA thesis, George Peabody College for Teachers (now Vanderbilt Universitys Peabody College), 1931. [CDATA[ The CALS Foundation is a 501(c)(3) organization. Tractors, although making an appearance in the Delta soon after World War I, were at first impractical due to poor design, high cost, and the dominance of small-scale sharecropping and tenant farming in the state. /* Written by Amit Agarwal - labnol.org */ By June, water covered more than 6,000 square miles and all but destroyed the row crops. Whayne, Jeannie M., and Willard B. Gatewood Jr., eds. There are roughly 47,800 farms in Arkansas, with an average size of 282 acres. Criticized by sportsmen and environmentalists for misusing the land, polluting streams, and altering habitat for wildlife, Arkansas farmers have increasingly lost debates on public policy issues involving their industry. } c = document.getElementById('ptac-faq-answer' + str); } But even then the plantation cotton-slave culture exceeded the self-sufficient hill farmers only in the dollar value of their investments in chattel and land. Trapped in stagnant pools, these waters formed backwater swamps, and the finer particles coalesced into clay. Visitors can buy wines, tour the winery and watch the production process. Nearly 200 feet above sea level, the elevation varies less than 150 feet. count = d.length; Perhaps the most divisive impact of the war was a policy that allowed those owning twenty or more slaves to be exempt from military service. (function(){ [CDATA[ var b = 0; Agriculture in the Nineteenth Century Geography played a key role in shaping Arkansas agriculture. Bolton, S. Charles. Guiding communities and regions toward vibrant and sustainable futures. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2002. Just as rural Arkansans were adjusting to their losses from the flood and the timber industry changes, another natural disaster struck. [21], Coordinates: .mw-parser-output .geo-default,.mw-parser-output .geo-dms,.mw-parser-output .geo-dec{display:inline}.mw-parser-output .geo-nondefault,.mw-parser-output .geo-multi-punct{display:none}.mw-parser-output .longitude,.mw-parser-output .latitude{white-space:nowrap}3522N 9322W / 35.36N 93.37W / 35.36; -93.37. It rises more than 200 feet above the floodplain and varies up to ten miles in width as it stretches 150 miles from the Mississippi River at Helena (Phillips County) to the Missouri border near Corning (Clay County). But World War II transformed agriculture, and in twenty-five years, machines turned what had been a lifestyle into a capitalistic endeavor. West and north of the Mississippi River floodplain lay the Ouachita Mountains and the Ozark uplift. var a = 0; These crops brought diversification to the Deltas agricultural practices that generations of spokesmen had only dreamed about. The federal Farm Bill of 1956 instituted a new plan for cotton producers. { { Many immigrants came to the River Valley searching for agricultural prosperity, particularly by farming cotton, which could fetch high prices at market and quickly turn a farm into a profitable enterprise. Historian Carl Moneyhon established that many large landowners persisted through the war and continued to dominate Arkansas agriculture economically after the war. Near Ozark, the Aux Arc Park offers boating access to the Arkansas River and RV sites. for (var i = 0; i < count; i++) { { Fourche River Days in Perryville, April. By the time Congress took steps in 1888 to again limit access to the public domain, Arkansas had few public lands left. At six cents a pound, standard wages for first picking in 1930, a hard worker could make six to eighteen dollars a day. But even modernization did not remove the risks. As the demographic shifts occurred, rural Arkansas developed pockets of settlement occupied by people without land and dependent on a day wage.