WESTWARD!!!!!

Long time no blog! Recently we have been learning about moving westward. This resulted because of all the people coming to America and all the land that was up for grabs. The Homestead Act of 1862 was where the person moving west would pay $10 and in return they would get 160 acres. What a deal, huh? But with that 160 acres they had to plant 5 years worth of crops.
New farmers all thought pretty much the same because they've never farmed before. They thought, "This is easy! I'll just plant a bunch of wheat and I'll get high yields. I'm set!" The only bad thing about that is so many more people did that also. So there was a high amount of wheat and not so much money for the farmers. The farmers didn't know that the other farmers were doing this also, so they just kept planting more wheat.
The Department of Agriculture rolled around the corner and introduced the farmers to crop rotation and different ways of planting crops. This was new to the farmers because they got used to their soil and what they were planting. In the West the soil sucks. So they taught the farmers how to plant in circles so that the water for the plants wouldn't just roll off the land. This helped the farmers get crop diversity and better revenue on their crops.
These days, we can plant enough food for about 3 million people with even less farm acreage. This is due to technological advances and biotechnology. Scientists can take genes from one organism and put them with other organisms to counter whatever disease or disorder they have. Sciences have come such a far way and the only way is up!