Introduction

The history of American agriculture not only covers three-and-a-half centuries in time but also the spatial movement of settlers across an entire continent. It equally is a history of an agriculture which gradually evolved to become the most productive and efficient that man has ever known. It is not surprising, therefore, that this lengthy history should have provided a bewildering and seemingly endless variety of potentially profitable new institutional arrangements.

At least from the era of independence the fundamental institutional arrangements have changed very little. Perhaps the most basic of all, the ability to own and dispose of land freely, was an early achievement in the American colonies despite some abortive and brief efforts to hold land in common. This property right gave the colonists and then the independent farmer the ability to receive all of the benefits from whatever productive efforts he undertook and was an initial and important impetus to the successive histories of the institutional arrangements which we shall examine. Another important underpinning was the set of decisions arrived at during the era of confederation to dispose of the public domain in such a way that it would shift from public to private hands. The series of acts between 1784 and 1787 laid out the basic ground rules in which the survey units were defined and specified and the original decisions about land sales and distribution were made.