George Washington Carver: The Building Blocks Of Agriculture

The Building Blocks of Agriculture
African Americans, whether as slaves, free citizens, or farm owners/sharecroppers, have greatly impacted the agricultural field, specifically in the southern regions of the United States through the areas of development, sustainability, and progression. With this being said, George Washington Carver, an American inventor and agriculturist, became one of the many building blocks to American agriculture by helping the Southern farmer utilize and broaden their crop production and usage. African Americans and the Southern farmer along with the lending hand of Carver served as the backbone for the most pristine industry in the world; the industry that feeds the entire nation. American agriculture persists today

Booker T. Washington, the founder of the Alabama Tuskegee Institution, invited Carver to join his educational team to oversee agriculture department and research. “Carver 's efforts to improve the economy of the South (he dedicated himself specially to bettering the position of African Americans) included the teaching of soil improvement and of diversification of crops” (A Mighty Vision Beyond Peanuts 1). Carver made a great impression at the Tuskegee Institute and consequently the agricultural industry when he unified American agricultural that had been previously associated with poverty and sharecropping. In George Washington Carver’s biography the author, Myers, states, “During a tenure that lasted nearly fifty years, Carver elevated the scientific study of farming, improved the health and agricultural output of Southern farmers, and developed hundreds of uses for their crops” (Myers 2). Carver extended an eager, helping hand that navigated Southern farmers’ production in a manner that better benefited the producer and supplier, alike. Non-enslaved African Americans could obtain ownership of their own farms and produce crops freely for themselves or for gainful sale. The average Southern farmer lived in poverty and

Without Carver’s inquisitive mind and eagerness to serve others, there is no way of knowing where our agricultural industry would be today. Carver became a foundational building block of American agriculture along with the Southern farmer and enslaved or free African Americans. The foundation of the agricultural industry is greatly indebted to African Americans, enslaved and free, George Washington Carver, the uses of the peanut, and the Southern farmer alike, which all make up the foundational building blocks of the agricultural industry. Even today, the agricultural field has advanced in such a manner that tractors are basically driving themselves, livestock that manages successfully without supervision, and fields that bale themselves into hay, but without the foundational building blocks these advances would be prolonged into the