1922 | Agriculture
Agriculture
V. I. Lenin permits small private farms to help Russians produce more food (see Stalin, 1928).
Harold M. Ware arrives in Russia with 21 tractors, other farm machinery, seeds, supplies, and food (see 1921). Assigned to lands in the Urals, Ware and his volunteer associates seed most of 4,000 acres in winter wheat; they encourage peasants to give up their holdings and join a collective (see 1925).
Finland's legislature enacts a land reform program that follows a 1918 Smallholdings Law, allowing the expropriation of estates exceeding 200 hectares (495 acres). The laws create more than 90,000 small holdings, and the independent landowners (many of whom have been tenant farmers or landless farm workers) will comprise a majority of the country's Agrarian Party (see politics, 1925).
U.S. farmers remain in deep depression with a few exceptions such as California citrus growers. The Capper Volstead Act passed by Congress February 18 exempts agricultural marketing cooperatives from antitrust law restrictions. The co-ops are subject to supervision by the secretary of agriculture, who is to prevent them from raising prices "unduly."
English-born Canadian veterinarian Francis "Frank" W. Schofield, 33, finds the cause of the hemorrhagic disease that has decimated Alberta cattle herds: the animals ate moldy silage made from sweet clover containing what later will be identified as dicumarol that prevents blood from clotting (see Warfarin, 1947).
California becomes a year-round source of oranges as Valencia orange production catches up with navel orange production (see 1875; 1906; Sunkist, 1919).
The first U.S. soybean refinery begins operations at Decatur, Illinois (see 1906; soybean crop, 1921). Corn processor A. E. Staley removes at least 96 percent of the oil and sells the residue, or cake, to the feed industry for use in commercial feeds, or to farmers to mix with other ingredients as a protein supplement for livestock (see soybean crop, 1923).
A Grain Futures Act passed by Congress September 21 curbs speculation, thought to have contributed to the collapse of grain prices in 1920. The new act supersedes an August 1921 act that has been declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court; it limits price fluctuations within any given period on U.S. grain exchanges.