Historical Background

As part of the background for this project, we thought it may be useful to comment on the history that provides the narrative for our sustainable agriculture program.

During the colonial period, Virginia agriculture was dominated by tobacco. The enormous wealth created by the production of tobacco made it possible for the Lees and other Virginia planters to build their magnificent homes, create a social system that encouraged progressive political ideas, and live a life of rural gentility and relative independence.

While tobacco created great wealth and is what made Virginia an economically successful colony, its cultivation had other, less desirable, outcomes. Tobacco production favored large scale production and required large quantities of labor. Its cultivation was dominated by an elite planter class who controlled vast amounts of land and labor, to the exclusion of smaller farmers. The challenge of securing an adequate labor force was solved by creating a system of chattel slavery where people of African descent were brought to Virginia against their will.

Cultivation of tobacco also encouraged the adoption of wasteful agricultural practices. Land was abundant, so there was little incentive to pursue progressive agricultural practices. The struggle of Virginia’s planters to master their environment, labor and economic systems is a constant theme of period diaries and letters. The historian Lynn Nelson, in her recent book Pharsalia, provides a useful perspective on this theme. Nelson’s agroecological history describes the Massie family’s ultimately unsuccessful over 100 year effort to master indifferent soil and a slave labor force in order to realize the Jeffersonian ideal of becoming independent gentry farmers. These efforts never strayed far from techniques first practiced in the 17th century Virginia.

The Civil War finally ended the south’s over two century reliance on slave labor. It did not resolve the struggle with the southern environment or correct years of failing agricultural practices. While there were efforts at reform, it took the depression to create the impetus for real change. Lewis Cecil Gray’s, History of Agriculture in the Southern United States to 1860, published in 1933, was the result of increased attention directed at the problems of southern agriculture, especially in Virginia. Gray’s long view of the development of southern agricultural tradition explained how management practices dating back to the 17th and 18th century resulted in the ruinous problems that developed in the late 19th and early 20th century. The ultimate solutions to these problems were the adoption of scientific techniques that included mono-crop farms that rely on the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. These scientific techniques have enabled modern American farmers to increase productivity and yields and reduce costs.

In recent years, there has been a renewed interest in the intersection of agriculture and the environment. There has been a realization that the evolution of agriculture practices from Native Americans to the more intensive practices brought by European settlers have left their marks on the land and effected water resources. The introduction of new plant and animal species brought by European settlers, and other impacts on the biodiversity of North America, has attracted renewed attention. Of particular importance has been the consideration of how modern agricultural practice affects the human diet.

One of the earliest critics of modern agricultural practices is Wendell Berry. In a series of publications, Berry criticized the government and corporate interests who have destroyed small family farms by promoting the use of chemical fertilizers and farming practices that encourage wasteful and soil destroying cultivation practices. More recently, the writer Michael Pollan has extended Berry’s arguments by examining the operation of the modern agriculture and food processing system. Pollan focuses primarily on the role of corn, once the sacred crop of the Incas, which has now become the principal ingredient in modern processed food and the component that makes the operation of industrial meat processing plants possible. Pollan argues these practices, at the heart of modern system of efficient food production, have numerous adverse impacts. Chief among them is the production of food that is unhealthy for humans. It is also unhealthy for many animals. Cattle, for example, are not designed to digest corn and need to be treated with antibiotics and other drugs to assure their continued health prior to slaughter. The entire food production system has become globalized, creating expenses in transport and uncertainty over food quality standards.

Much of the focus of scholarship on 18th century Virginia agriculture has been on the economics and challenges of staple export crop production, principally tobacco and wheat. However, the production of food for export, local or household consumption is also of great importance. Unlike the modern American consumer, an 18th century Virginian would have relied almost entirely on food he either grew himself or bought from a neighbor. A recent study on the provisioning of colonial towns produced by Lorena Walsh and other members of the Colonial Williamsburg Research Department has been very useful in describing the sophisticated system developed to produce and supply foodstuffs to colonial Virginians. Drawing on evidence from the account books of local planters, Walsh and her colleagues depict a system of local production that supplied everything from vegetables and meats to firewood and represented a significant source of revenue for many planters. There are many aspects of the colonial food production system that are similar to what modern advocates like Michael Pollan suggest should become part of the modern organic farm.

Most Americans are unaware of the historical developments that have created our present agriculture and food production network. The principal purpose of Stratford Hall’s sustainable farming program is to address this important issue, enabling our visitors to fully understand this complex historical relationship between agriculture, the environment, the economy and diet. This will be accomplished by both demonstrating and contrasting colonial and modern organic agricultural techniques, creating a connection between the past and the present, an awareness of how our agricultural practices have changed, and their impact on our lives and future.