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File:DeepPink pog.svg 110 or greater grain car
File:Blue pog.svg 100 to 109
File:Red pog.svg Less than 99
File:Star-03122022.svg Announced facility (2014)
The Corn Belt is a region of the Midwestern United States and part of the Southern United States that, since the 1850s, has dominated corn production in the United States. In North America, corn is the common word for maize. More generally, the concept of the Corn Belt connotes the area of the Midwest dominated by farming and agriculture, though it stretches down into the South as well reaching into Kentucky.<ref>John Mark Hansen, Gaining access: Congress and the farm lobby, 1919–1981 (1991) p. 138</ref><ref>Thomas F. McIlwraith and Edward K. Muller, North America: the historical geography of a changing continent (2001) p, 186</ref>
GeographyEdit
There is lack of consensus regarding the constituents of the Corn Belt, although it often includes Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, southern Michigan, western Ohio, eastern Nebraska, eastern Kansas, southern Minnesota, and parts of Missouri.<ref name="Hart 1986">Hart (1986)</ref> It also sometimes includes South Dakota, North Dakota, all of Ohio, Wisconsin, all of Michigan, and Kentucky.<ref name="agcensus">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Some people and industries break the Corn Belt down even further and refer to it as the Eastern Corn Belt and the Western Corn Belt.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
The region is characterized by level land, deep fertile soils, and a high organic soil concentration.<ref name="Britannica">Corn Belt, Encyclopædia Britannica Online</ref>
As of 2008, the top four corn-producing states were Iowa, Illinois, Nebraska, and Minnesota, accounting for more than half of the corn growth in the U.S.<ref name="usda">USDA State Fact sheets</ref>
More recently, the Corn Belt was mapped at the county level using the Land use and Agricultural Management Practices web-Service (LAMPS),<ref name="Kipka 2016">[1], Kipka et al. 2016, Development of the Land-use and Agricultural Management Practice web-Service (LAMPS) for generating crop rotations in space and time, Soil & Tillage Research, Vol 155, p, 233–249.</ref> along with animated maps of changes in time (2010–2016).<ref name="Green 2018">[2], Green et al. 2018, Where is the USA Corn Belt, and how is it changing? Sci. Total Environment, Vol. 618, p. 1613-1618.</ref>
HistoryEdit
William Scully (1821-1906), from a wealthy landowning Catholic family in West Tipperary, Ireland, immigrated to Chicago in 1851. He bought up hundreds of thousands of acres of prime Corn Belt farmland in the Midwest, and rented it to tenants. By 1906 he owned and 225,000 acres in Illinois, Kansas, Nebraska, and Missouri, renting it out to 1200 tenants.<ref>Homer E. Socolofsky, "William Scully: Ireland and America, 1840-1900." Agricultural History 48.1 (1974): 155-175.</ref>
On account of new agricultural technology developments between 1860 and 1970, the Corn Belt went from producing mixed crops and livestock into becoming an area focused strictly on wheat-cash planting. After 1970, increased crop and meat production required an export outlet, but global recession and a strong dollar reduced exports and created serious problems even for the best farm managers.<ref name="Hart 1986"/>
In 1956, former Vice President Henry A. Wallace, a pioneer of hybrid seed, declared that the Corn Belt had developed the "most productive agricultural civilization the world has ever seen".<ref>Edward L. Schapsmeier and Frederick H. Schapsmeier, Prophet in Politics: Henry A. Wallace and the War Years, 1940–1965 (1970) p, 234</ref>
Most corn grown today is fed to livestock, especially hogs and poultry. In recent decades, soybeans have grown in importance.
By 1950, 99% of corn has been grown from hybrids.
EPA EcoregionEdit
In 1997, the USEPA published its report on the United States' ecoregions, in part based on "land use". Its "Level III" region classification contains three contiguous "Corn Belt" regions, Western (47), Central (54), and Eastern (55), stretching from Indiana to eastern Nebraska.<ref name=CEC>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>Template:Panorama
See alsoEdit
- Breadbasket
- Canadian Prairies, Canada's 'Breadbasket'
- Central Black Earth Region, segment of the Eurasian chernozem belt that lies within Central Russia
- Grain elevator
- Palliser's Triangle, Canada's semi-arid grain production region
- Peak wheat
- William Scully (Irish-American landlord), by 1900 the largest landowner in the Corn Belt and the USA
ReferencesEdit
Further readingEdit
- Anderson, J. L. Industrializing the Corn Belt: Agriculture, Technology, and Environment, 1945–1972 (2009) 238 pp. Template:ISBN
- Bogue, Allan. From Prairie to Corn Belt: Farming on the Illinois and Iowa Prairies in the Nineteenth Century (1963)
- Cayton, Andrew, et al. eds. The American Midwest: An Interpretive Encyclopedia (2006) excerpt and text search
- Hart, John Fraser. "Change in the Corn Belt", Geographical Review, Jan 1986, Vol. 76#1 pp. 51–72
- Hudson, John C. Making the Corn Belt: A Geographical History of Middle-Western Agriculture (1994)
- Power, Richard Lyle. Planting Corn Belt Culture: The Impress of the Upland Southerner and Yankee in the old Northwest (1953)
- Snapp, Roscoe R. Beef Cattle Their Feeding and Management in the Corn Belt States (1950)
- Smith, C. Wayne, et al. Corn: Origin, History, Technology, and Production (2004) online edition
- Socolofsky, Homer E. "William Scully's Irish and American Lands 1843-1976." Western Historical Quarterly 9.2 (1978): 149–161. online
- Wallace, Henry Agard. Henry A. Wallace's Irrigation Frontier: On the Trail of the Corn Belt Farmer 1909 15 articles written by Wallace in 1909; 1991 edition edited by Richard Lowitt, and Judith Fabry
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