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Where Have All the Farmers Gone? by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz The United States was a land of farmers, from first settlement to the industrial revolution that took off in the 1830s. European settlers, mainly from England, Scotland, and Ireland, were overwhelmingly farmers, peasants, from generations of the same. They came to North America for land to farm. With the support of the British colonial institutions, and later the United States government and military, they appropriated land from the indigenous farmers, a kind of original sin that has seldom been acknowledged. Poor farmers without slaves, the great majority of white settler farmers, could not compete on the market with the enslaved African labor enjoyed by plantation operators. But they could raise their own food and feed their families and even have some surplus to sell or barter. And in working the land, they came to love the land. With the 1846-48 United States war against Mexico, the northern half of Mexico became the U.S. Southwest, populated by both indigenous and Mexican farmers. Following the Civil War and emancipation, Africans were freed from enslavement, and some received reparations in land taken from plantation owners or in new territories that had been seized. More>>
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