Breadbasket to the World

America’s Great Plains has been called both the nation’s “heartland” and its “breadbasket.” In fact, so much food is grown in the Midwest that there is enough to help feed other nations. A lot of that is thanks simply to great natural resources. Public policies and economic advances also have played a part in advancing good agricultural practices. Without a series of inventions, though, U.S. agriculture could not have achieved the efficiency needed to make farming work on a large scale.

Settling the Prairie

Before the early 1800s, most Americans settled along the Atlantic Coast and lived on self-sufficient farms. A family’s members grew almost all their