The Father of Modern Agriculture
"My father was a farmer, my grandfather was an inventor", these were the words of my grandmother, Lavonne Holland. She was speaking proudly about my great-great grandfather, the inventor, Cyrus Hall McCormick (1809-1884). She also told me, "Not many people know who Cyrus McCormick is these days, but his memory will live forever in the fields of waving grain"(Holland). The most important thing my Grandmother said to me was, "In the generations around that of my great grandfathers, the planting of grain was dependant only on the ability of the reapers to gather the grain by hand"(Holland). Which meant the crop size was limited to how much that was possible to cut, and the failure of a small crop could have meant famine for that family. However all of this was soon to change, new mechanical inventions would help to change the face of farming forever. This paper will only begin to emphasize a few of the major contributions of Cyrus McCormick the man who is commonly known as, the father of modern agriculture. Cyrus Hall McCormick was born near Lexington, Virginia in 1809. One can only imagine how he spent his free time as a boy on his family's 532-acre farm known as "walnut grove"(McCormick). H
Cyrus McCormick's invention of the mechanical reaper made it possible for fewer farmers to cultivate much more grain, in much less time. Cyrus McCormick not only totally redefined the struggling business of agriculture, his mechanical reaper also greatly helped to strengthen the growing businesses of American industry. In 1831 most of the American population was directly involved in some kind of farming. Today only a small percentage of the population grow more food than the whole country can consume. The machines built by Cyrus McCormick and his successors, which now are known to harvest hundreds of acres a day, have enabled many Americans to seek futures in any field that they choose. This was not true for our ancestors who were greatly restricted in what they could do with their lives. The invention of the reaper, over time, turned many small family-farming communities into large-scale farms, and allowed many people to seek employment in the cities. McCormick's original mechanical reaper may look like an ancient and crude machine to most people, but it was a predecessor to the great fleet of reapers, binders, and combines that changed the world forever. Cyrus McCormick's mechanical reaper actually started the paradigm of mechanical farming. His achievements satisfy both characteristics of Thomas S. Kuhn's definition of paradigms from his article "The Route to Normal Science" (165). Specifically, McCormick's invention, attracted a large group of farmers away from the customs of traditional farming, the reaper also used basic fundamentals, which are still in use in today's grain cutting machines. Cyrus McCormick's mechanical reaper also satisfies the term "normal science", used by Kuhn in his article
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Approximate Word count = 1157
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
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