The Need for Preservation Farming in North Carolina Agriculture has always been important to North Carolina. Even before the first English settlers arrived at Roanoke Island, American Indians were cultivating corn and tobacco. Later, European settlers created Map of The Great Wagon Road and its offshoots in North Carolina, 1750-1780. By Mark Anderson Moore, courtesy North Carolina Office of Archives and History, Raleigh. moderate sized family farms that became the standard across North Carolina. In the eighteenth century, English, Scots-Irish, and German settlers began arriving in the western Piedmont area of North Carolina. Most traveled the Great Wagon Road from Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Maryland. Others moved from the east. Their lives and the lives of their descendants were interwoven with the rhythms of nature as they relied on the soil to provide essentials for survival. During the late nineteenth century, market demands outgrew the capabilities of small farmers and mechanization began threatening this way of life. Over time fewer and fewer North Carolinians engaged in farming. Industrialization, improved transportation, two world wars, and the lure of jobs in urban settings all contributed to the decline. 1900 87-88% of the state’s population farmed 224,637 farms in North Carolina 1910 255,000 1920 273,000 1930 290,000 1940 300,000 1950 291,000 * Since 1951, North Carolina has consistently lost between 1,000 and 10,000 small farms each year.* 1960 205,000 1970 150,000 1980 93,000 1990 62,000 2000 57,000 2018 46,400 While many people are no longer involved in farming, every person continues to depend on and have their lives dramatically impacted by agriculture. Our heritage is all that we know of ourselves, what we preserve of it, our only record. That record is our beacon in the darkness of time: the light that guides our steps. Conservation is the means by which we preserve it. It is a commitment not to the past, but the future. Philip Ward in The Nature of Conservation: A Race Against Time
The Need for Preservation Farming in North Carolina Agriculture has always been important to North Carolina. Even before the first English settlers arrived at Roanoke Island, American Indians were cultivating corn and tobacco. Later, European settlers created Map of The Great Wagon Road and its offshoots in North Carolina, 1750-1780. By Mark Anderson Moore, courtesy North Carolina Office of Archives and History, Raleigh. moderate sized family farms that became the standard across North Carolina. In the eighteenth century, English, Scots-Irish, and German settlers began arriving in the western Piedmont area of North Carolina. Most traveled the Great Wagon Road from Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Maryland. Others moved from the east. Their lives and the lives of their descendants were interwoven with the rhythms of nature as they relied on the soil to provide essentials for survival. During the late nineteenth century, market demands outgrew the capabilities of small farmers and mechanization began threatening this way of life. Over time fewer and fewer North Carolinians engaged in farming. Industrialization, improved transportation, two world wars, and the lure of jobs in urban settings all contributed to the decline. 1900 87-88% of the state’s population farmed 224,637 farms in North Carolina 1910 255,000 1920 273,000 1930 290,000 1940 300,000 1950 291,000 * Since 1951, North Carolina has consistently lost between 1,000 and 10,000 small farms each year.* 1960 205,000 1970 150,000 1980 93,000 1990 62,000 2000 57,000 2018 46,400 While many people are no longer involved in farming, every person continues to depend on and have their lives dramatically impacted by agriculture. Our heritage is all that we know of ourselves, what we preserve of it, our only record. That record is our beacon in the darkness of time: the light that guides our steps. Conservation is the means by which we preserve it. It is a commitment not to the past, but the future. Philip Ward in The Nature of Conservation: A Race Against Time
