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The Agroecologies Of A Southern Community: The Tye River Valley Of Virginia, 1730-1860, Lynn A. Nelson

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

The farmers of piedmont Virginia's Tye River Valley adapted agriculture to a commercial frontier during the eighteenth century. This 'frontier agroecosystem' optimized labor returns by exploiting the stored fertility of mature ecosystems at the expense of conservation, but proved vulnerable to population growth and soil exhaustion. Out-migration increased after the Revolution, and economic growth was stymied by limited capital and consumer formation. The frontier agroecosystem could not provide the reliable commercial returns needed to promote development or stable neighborhoods.;During the early 1800s, prominent planters demanded that Virginia farming be intensified---that land productivity be maximized, rather than labor productivity. This strategy, …