During the Civil War, wheat prices
went up, and Iowans planted more. By the end of the war, the price of wheat had
bottomed out. Further, pests like grasshoppers and chinch
bugs attacked the wheat, destroying the
whole crop in some years. For many Iowa farmers, that was the signal to put
their energy into corn and livestock. Iowans realized they could make more
money on corn, particularly when faced with competition from wheat from
newly-opened farms on the Great Plains. Corn was worth more per acre and Iowa
could grow it better than Nebraska and Kansas.
Farmers had tended to be careless in their use of the land. This was not
just Iowa's problem; Americans were used to thinking there would always be more
land for new farms. By the 1880’s they saw this would not be true much longer.
Farmers began to take an interest in keeping their soil fertile. They rotated
corn with oats and hay to prevent crop diseases and insects. Crop
rotation also
helped to keep the soil supplied with different plant foods, instead of wearing
it out by growing the same crop year after year.[1]
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