Kenneth M Sylvester
Biographic Data
| ID | 4101783 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Kenneth M Sylvester |
| GIVEN NAMES | Kenneth M |
| FAMILY NAME | Sylvester |
| SIGNATURE | SYLVESTER K M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Michigan |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3390-6637 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 13 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 25 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 13 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2000 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2020 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Introduction to special issues on historical record linking
Making Green Revolutions: Kansas Farms, Recovery, and the New Agriculture, 1918–1981
The literature on the Dust Bowl conveys the impression of widespread exodus from the Great Plains. But farm populations were often more resilient than the iconic photographs of the era suggest. While recent studies highlight that tenacity, less is known about the process of recovery and postwar growth. This paper offers a window on both. The evidence discussed here survives as a legacy of a long-lived, state-run agricultural statistics program in…
At the margins: Agriculture, subsidies and the shifting fate of North America’s native grassland
Migration in the 1930s: Beyond the Dust Bowl
This paper analyzes in detail the role of environmental and economic shocks in the migration of the 1930s. The 1940 US Census of Population asked every inhabitant where they lived five years earlier, a unique source for understanding migration flows and networks. Earlier research documented migrant origins and destinations, but we will show how short-term and annual weather conditions at sending locations in the 1930s explain those flows, and how…
Revising the Dust Bowl: High Above the Kansas Grasslands
This article reconstructs land cover patterns in Depressionera Kansas from historical aerial photos and compares the locations of crop fields to areas of submarginal land identified in modern digital soil survey maps. The analysis argues that New Deal land retirement programs overestimated the degree of bad land use because they lacked the basic science to make comprehensive assessments. The findings demonstrate that the misuse of land unfit for …
Ecological Frontiers on the Grasslands of Kansas: Changes in Farm Scale and Crop Diversity
Farms stood at an ecological frontier in the 1930s. With new and better agricultural machinery, more farms than ever before made the leap to thousand acre enterprises. But did they abandon mixed husbandry in the process? This article explores the origins of the modern relationship between scale and diversity using a new sample of Kansas farms. In 25 townships across the state, between 1875 and 1940, the evidence demonstrates that relatively few p…
An Unremembered Diversity: Mixed Husbandry and the American Grasslands
The Green Revolution of the 1960s brought about a dramatic rise in global crop yields. But, as most observers acknowledge, this has come at a considerable cost to biodiversity. Plant breeding, synthetic fertilizers, and mechanization steadily narrowed the number of crop varieties commercially available to farmers and promoted fencerow-to-fencerow monocultures. Many historians trace the origins of this style of industrialized agriculture to the la…
Immigrant Parents, Ethnic Children, and Family Formation in the Early Prairie West
1 Royden Loewen illustrates some of the magnitudes in his Ethnic Farm Culture in Western Canada (Ottawa: Canadian Historical Association 2002), Canada's Ethnic Groups Series
The Limits of Rural Capitalism: Family, Culture, and Markets in Montcalm, Manitoba, 1870-1940
The Limits of Rural Capitalism. is an important study of the social and economic development of the Municipality of Montcalm, a largely French-Canadian community in southern Manitoba. It challenges the view in prairie historiography that agriculture had commercialized before the west was opened to settlement, and that ethnic communities alone resisted the market's potential. Using a novel combination of demographic, financial, and legal evidence,…
The Rise of Agrarian Democracy: The United Farmers and Farm Women of Alberta, 1909-1921
Journal Article The Rise of Agrarian Democracy: The United Farmers and Farm Women of Alberta, 1909–1921 and The Limits of Rural Capitalism: Family, Culture, and Markets in Montcalm, Manitoba, 1870–1940 Get access The Rise of Agrarian Democracy: The United Farmers and Farm Women of Alberta, 1909–1921. By Rennie Bradford James. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000. 282 pp. Illustrations, notes, index. $65, £42 cloth; $24.95, £16, paper.)The …
The Limits of Rural Capitalism: Family, Culture, and Markets in Montcalm, Manitoba, 1870-1940
Household Composition and Canada’s Rural Capitalism: The Extent of Rural Labor Markets in 1901
The impact of family structure on waged employment is examined using data from the national sample of the 1901 census. The findings suggest that historical inflexibility in the supply of rural labor stemmed from the demands farm parents placed von work-age children. The pervasiveness of family proprietorship in agriculture worked to keep a majority of work-age Canadians outside of waged employment in 1901. Even in the country’s western interior, …
Rural Land in the 1901 Census; Inequality, Gender, and Property
Key Words: rurallandinequalitygenderproperty
Revising the Dust Bowl: High Above the Kansas Grasslands
This article reconstructs land cover patterns in Depressionera Kansas from historical aerial photos and compares the locations of crop fields to areas of submarginal land identified in modern digital soil survey maps. The analysis argues that New Deal land retirement programs overestimated the degree of bad land use because they lacked the basic science to make comprehensive assessments. The findings demonstrate that the misuse of land unfit for …
Migration in the 1930s: Beyond the Dust Bowl
This paper analyzes in detail the role of environmental and economic shocks in the migration of the 1930s. The 1940 US Census of Population asked every inhabitant where they lived five years earlier, a unique source for understanding migration flows and networks. Earlier research documented migrant origins and destinations, but we will show how short-term and annual weather conditions at sending locations in the 1930s explain those flows, and how…
At the margins: Agriculture, subsidies and the shifting fate of North America’s native grassland
Introduction to special issues on historical record linking
An Unremembered Diversity: Mixed Husbandry and the American Grasslands
The Green Revolution of the 1960s brought about a dramatic rise in global crop yields. But, as most observers acknowledge, this has come at a considerable cost to biodiversity. Plant breeding, synthetic fertilizers, and mechanization steadily narrowed the number of crop varieties commercially available to farmers and promoted fencerow-to-fencerow monocultures. Many historians trace the origins of this style of industrialized agriculture to the la…
Household Composition and Canada’s Rural Capitalism: The Extent of Rural Labor Markets in 1901
The impact of family structure on waged employment is examined using data from the national sample of the 1901 census. The findings suggest that historical inflexibility in the supply of rural labor stemmed from the demands farm parents placed von work-age children. The pervasiveness of family proprietorship in agriculture worked to keep a majority of work-age Canadians outside of waged employment in 1901. Even in the country’s western interior, …
Rural Land in the 1901 Census; Inequality, Gender, and Property
Key Words: rurallandinequalitygenderproperty
The Limits of Rural Capitalism: Family, Culture, and Markets in Montcalm, Manitoba, 1870-1940
Household Composition and Canada’s Rural Capitalism: The Extent of Rural Labor Markets in 1901
The impact of family structure on waged employment is examined using data from the national sample of the 1901 census. The findings suggest that historical inflexibility in the supply of rural labor stemmed from the demands farm parents placed von work-age children. The pervasiveness of family proprietorship in agriculture worked to keep a majority of work-age Canadians outside of waged employment in 1901. Even in the country’s western interior, …
The Rise of Agrarian Democracy: The United Farmers and Farm Women of Alberta, 1909-1921
Journal Article The Rise of Agrarian Democracy: The United Farmers and Farm Women of Alberta, 1909–1921 and The Limits of Rural Capitalism: Family, Culture, and Markets in Montcalm, Manitoba, 1870–1940 Get access The Rise of Agrarian Democracy: The United Farmers and Farm Women of Alberta, 1909–1921. By Rennie Bradford James. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000. 282 pp. Illustrations, notes, index. $65, £42 cloth; $24.95, £16, paper.)The …
Immigrant Parents, Ethnic Children, and Family Formation in the Early Prairie West
1 Royden Loewen illustrates some of the magnitudes in his Ethnic Farm Culture in Western Canada (Ottawa: Canadian Historical Association 2002), Canada's Ethnic Groups Series
The Limits of Rural Capitalism: Family, Culture, and Markets in Montcalm, Manitoba, 1870-1940
The Limits of Rural Capitalism. is an important study of the social and economic development of the Municipality of Montcalm, a largely French-Canadian community in southern Manitoba. It challenges the view in prairie historiography that agriculture had commercialized before the west was opened to settlement, and that ethnic communities alone resisted the market's potential. Using a novel combination of demographic, financial, and legal evidence,…
Ecological Frontiers on the Grasslands of Kansas: Changes in Farm Scale and Crop Diversity
Farms stood at an ecological frontier in the 1930s. With new and better agricultural machinery, more farms than ever before made the leap to thousand acre enterprises. But did they abandon mixed husbandry in the process? This article explores the origins of the modern relationship between scale and diversity using a new sample of Kansas farms. In 25 townships across the state, between 1875 and 1940, the evidence demonstrates that relatively few p…
An Unremembered Diversity: Mixed Husbandry and the American Grasslands
The Green Revolution of the 1960s brought about a dramatic rise in global crop yields. But, as most observers acknowledge, this has come at a considerable cost to biodiversity. Plant breeding, synthetic fertilizers, and mechanization steadily narrowed the number of crop varieties commercially available to farmers and promoted fencerow-to-fencerow monocultures. Many historians trace the origins of this style of industrialized agriculture to the la…
Revising the Dust Bowl: High Above the Kansas Grasslands
This article reconstructs land cover patterns in Depressionera Kansas from historical aerial photos and compares the locations of crop fields to areas of submarginal land identified in modern digital soil survey maps. The analysis argues that New Deal land retirement programs overestimated the degree of bad land use because they lacked the basic science to make comprehensive assessments. The findings demonstrate that the misuse of land unfit for …
At the margins: Agriculture, subsidies and the shifting fate of North America’s native grassland
Migration in the 1930s: Beyond the Dust Bowl
This paper analyzes in detail the role of environmental and economic shocks in the migration of the 1930s. The 1940 US Census of Population asked every inhabitant where they lived five years earlier, a unique source for understanding migration flows and networks. Earlier research documented migrant origins and destinations, but we will show how short-term and annual weather conditions at sending locations in the 1930s explain those flows, and how…
Making Green Revolutions: Kansas Farms, Recovery, and the New Agriculture, 1918–1981
The literature on the Dust Bowl conveys the impression of widespread exodus from the Great Plains. But farm populations were often more resilient than the iconic photographs of the era suggest. While recent studies highlight that tenacity, less is known about the process of recovery and postwar growth. This paper offers a window on both. The evidence discussed here survives as a legacy of a long-lived, state-run agricultural statistics program in…
Introduction to special issues on historical record linking
Geography (9 works) · Political science (9 works) · Archaeology (8 works) · Agriculture (7 works) · Economics (7 works) · Sociology (7 works) · Canadian Identity and History (5 works) · Agricultural economics (4 works) · Agroforestry (4 works) · American Environmental and Regional History (4 works)