Research Catalog

Harvesting the high plains : John Kriss and the business of wheat farming, 1920-1950

Title: Harvesting the high plains : John Kriss and the business of wheat farming, 1920-1950 / Craig Miner.
Author: Miner, H. Craig.
Publication: Lawrence, KS : University Press of Kansas, 1998.

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Item details
Status	Format	Access	Call Number	Item Location
Request for On-site Use Request Scan How do I pick up this item and when will it be ready?	Text	Request in advance	S417.K748 M55 1998	Off-site

Description

xi, 225 pages : illustrations; 24 cm

Summary

The semiarid plains of western Kansas and eastern Colorado are hardly the setting for an agricultural empire, but it was here that former field hand John Kriss managed G-K Farms for Wichita entrepreneur Ray Garvey. Their enterprise became one of the largest wheat operations on the plains and yielded Kriss a one million bushel crop.
Harvesting the High Plains is the rags-to-riches story of how Kriss applied hard work and common sense to make large-scale farming work under the most adverse conditions.
Drawing on correspondence between Kriss and Garvey, it tells how the two men had to make innumerable decisions about the purchase of expensive machinery and of ever larger tracts of land, and how Kriss kept detailed records of crops and rainfall to manage the land carefully, farming thousands of acres in an environmentally sensitive way and retaining a viable operation even during the Dust Bowl years.
In chronicling the story of Kriss's success, historian Craig Miner provides a bold counterpoint to the argument that large, technology-based farming is inherently bad or that only small farmers can be conscientious stewards of the land.
He addresses philosophical and historical questions about the relation between agriculture and nature in a semiarid region, showing that G-K Farms managed to strike a remarkable balance between profit and ecology. He also suggests that G-K may even have done its region more economic good than small farms simply by staying in business during bad times.

Subjects

Bibliography (note)

ISBN

0700608745 (alk. paper)

LCCN

97023774

OCLC

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries