Colonial
...THE BEGINNING OF AMERICAN AGRICULTURAL LITERATURE
In colonial times almost every man was a farmer. Even the preachers and doctors were part-time farmers.
Jared Eliot, a minister and doctor of Killingsworth, Conn., was no exception. In his spare time he practiced farming and when he rode horseback calling upon his parishioners and the sick in his community, he noticed the way other farmers farmed.
He noticed that water running from a vegetated hillside was clear, but that water running from a bare hillside was muddy. He believed that the mud in the water was fertile soil from above. Most of New England was hilly, and every time muddy water ran off one of the fields the field got poorer. Eliot became so much interested in farming that he carried on many experiments, and studied the farming methods advocated by English authors.
At that time there were few books on agriculture and none that was suited to American agriculture. Practically nobody was interested in conserving the soil or in raising better crops or cultivating the land in such a way that it would not wash away.
Because land was so plentiful and capital was so scarce colonial agriculture was wasteful and inefficient. Eliot resolved to do what he could to improve the crops and to conserve the soil. After many years of experimentation and observation he incorporated his ideas into the first American book on agriculture, a series of essays, the first of which was published in 1748.
A large part of the book was devoted to a discussion of English practices. Between the time of the first English settlement in the New World and 1750 English agriculture made rapid strides, but in the colonies there was little improvement.
In England, "Turnip" Townsend was the outstanding advocate of root crops during the late eighteenth century and helped pave the way for...
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