This groundbreaking work argues that the origins of American capitalism planted its roots in the strong farmers' movements that were so central to the nation's early political development. It was the combined force of these social movements and efforts at state building that converged to produce agro-industrialisation in the U.S.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements ix List of Figures and Tables x Commonly Used Acronyms xi 1 Introduction 1 The Agro-Industrial Complex 3 Transcending State-Market Dichotomies 15 Overview of the Chapters 28 2 The Agro-Industrial Roots of the us Capitalist Transition through State Capacity Building: 1830–1870 32 us Land Policy in the North 33 Early Farmer Resistance to Market Expansion 39 Land, Debt and Speculation 46 Canal and Railroad Policy 48 Early State Involvement in Agriculture 51 Agro-Industrial Development 56 Conclusion 70 3 The End of Slavery and Southern Agricultural Class Structure 73 Slavery, the Civil War and the Transition 74 The Civil War and State Institutional Expansion 81 Postbellum Southern Agriculture 83 Uneven Development across the South 95 Tenancy and the Class Politics of Reconstruction 99 Conclusion 102 4 Agrarian Populism: The Rise and Fall of Populism 105 Farmers and Farming in the Late 19th Century usa 105 Late 19th Century Agrarian Political Economy 109 The Rise of Populism 111 Populist Politics 118 Populist Fractures 123 The Decline of Populism 126 The American Farm Bureau Federation 134 Conclusion 137 5 State Institutional Capacity Building of the usda-Research Complex 140 Institutional Response to Agrarian Movements 142 The Agro-Industrial Project in Research 147 State Capacity Building in Trade and Banking 155 Agro-Industrialization through Farmer Education 158 State Responses to the Agricultural Crisis of the 1920s 168 Conclusion 172 6 The New Deal and Agricultural State Institutional Capacity Building 174 The Politics of the Agricultural Adjustment Act 175 Southern Tenants and the aaa 184 Theories of the New Deal Era State 187 Class Influences on Institutional Development 193 The Specific Case of California Agriculture 197 The Consistency of Trade Promotion 203 Agriculture, the New Deal, and World War ii 208 Conclusion 212 7 Sowing the Seeds of Globalization: Post-War Food Aid, Trade and the Agricultural Roots of us Hegemony 215 Food Aid as Globalization’s Groundwork 217 Food Aid as Agro-Industrial Development Project 221 The Institutional Dimensions of Internationalization 225 The Crisis of the 1970s 231 Harvesting Free Trade 246 The Food Regimes Approach 251 Conclusion 262 8 Conclusion 266 Appendix A 273 Appendix B 278 Bibliography 280 Index 303