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"Hart, John Fraser"
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United States
An introduction to the United States that provides information on the country's geography, people, culture, history, government, economy, and climate.
Book
The unknown world of the mobile home
In American popular imagination, the mobile home evokes images of cramped interiors, cheap materials, and occupants too poor or unsavory to live anywhere else. Since the 1940s and '50s, however, mobile home manufacturers have improved standards of construction and now present them as an affordable alternative to conventional site-built homes. Today one of every fourteen Americans lives in a mobile home.
In The Unknown World of the Mobile Home authors John Fraser Hart, Michelle J. Rhodes, and John T. Morgan illuminate the history and culture of these often misunderstood domiciles. They describe early mobile homes, which were trailers designed to be pulled behind automobiles and which were more often than not poorly constructed and unequal to the needs of those who used them. During the 1970s, however, Congress enacted federal standards for the quality and safety of mobile homes, which led to innovation in design and the production of much more attractive and durable models. These models now comply with local building codes and many are designed to look like conventional houses. As a result, one out every five new single-family housing units purchased in the United States is a mobile home, sited everywhere from the conventional trailer park to custom-designed \"estates\" aimed at young couples and retirees. Despite all these changes in manufacture and design, even the most immobile mobile homes are still sold, financed, regulated, and taxed as vehicles.
With a wealth of detail and illustrations, The Unknown World of the Mobile Home provides readers with an in-depth look into this variation on the American dream.
eBook
Half a Century of Cropland Change
The census concept of total cropland is a better measure of effective agricultural land than is total farmland, which includes extensive areas of woodland owned by farmers. The cropland area of the United States dropped from 478 million acres in 1949 to 431 million acres in 1997, for a net loss of less than 1 million acres, or roughly one-fifth of 1 percent, per year. In the midwestern agricultural heartland most counties changed less than 5 percent in the half-century, and more counties gained than lost. The West was a crazy quilt of change, and in the East most counties lost more than 10 percent. Major metropolitan counties lost a few percentage points more than did adjacent areas, but at a lower rate per capita than the nation as a whole. Most of the loss of cropland was in marginal agricultural counties with soils of low inherent fertility and topography unsuited to modern farm machinery. The loss of cropland to suburban encroachment may be cause for intense local concern, but attempts to thwart development cannot be justified on grounds of a net national loss of good cropland.
Journal Article
Southern Crops in 1924
This paper explores how the geography of five Southern crops (cotton, peanuts, tobacco, sugarcane, and rice) has changed during the lifetime of one geographer. The principal areas of commercial-scale production have not changed much, but they have intensified. In 1924 farming was a way of life, and farmers tried to produce as much as possible of everything they needed. By 2007 farmers had learned to concentrate on what their computers told them they could do best, and modern farming has become a business or, for many undersized farm operators, merely a hobby.
Journal Article
Specialty Cropland in California
Census data do not support the widespread popular perception that urban encroachment on cropland in California is serious enough to justify programs of farmland preservation. Between 1949 and 1997 the acreage of harvested cropland declined near Los Angeles, in the San Francisco Bay area, and near Sacramento, but the high-value specialty agricultural production displaced from these areas has been relocated to more distant areas, where it has replaced lower-value field crops, and specialized agricultural production has increased steadily in the state. Vegetable production in the Salinas Valley and dairying near Los Angeles illustrate the twin processes of relocation and replacement. Urban encroachment actually has been a boon to California agriculture, because it has transferred massive amounts of urban capital to cash-strapped farmers and enabled them to develop efficient modern operations. Much of the concern about loss of farmland really is concern about loss of open space and amenities, and urban demand for water probably will be a greater constraint on California agriculture than will urban demand for land.
Journal Article
The Initial Impact of the Tobacco Buyout Program
Yes, in some parts of the world people actually do smoke it, but it is extraordinarily potent, and most of it has been used in smokeless products such as snuff and chewing tobacco, which until recently have been unacceptable in polite society, and in many quarters still are. Since the early 1990s, however, sales of smokeless tobacco products have been increasing steadily, and the Dark tobacco areas have a number of successful large farms (see Figure 4).
Journal Article
From Bolls to Boles
Tree boles have replaced cotton bolls as the principal products of vast rural areas in the South. Between 1949 and 2007 the acreage of cotton, tobacco, and peanuts declined dramatically. Fewer farms grew these crops, but their per acre productivity increased so greatly that they outpaced the demand for them, and much land that once produced them has become redundant. The forestlands that have superseded crops on redundant cropland provide a raw material base for the nation’s leading wood fiber producing region.
Journal Article
Southern Crops in 1924
Este trabajo explora la manera en que la geografía de cinco cultivos sureños (algodón, cacahuetes, tabaco, caña de azúcar y arroz) ha cambiado durante la vida de este geógrafo. Las áreas principales de producción a escala comercial no han cambiado mucho, pero se han intensificado. En 1924, el campo era una forma de vida y los campesinos intentaban producir tanto como les fuera posible de todo lo que necesitaban. Para el año 2007 los agricultores habían aprendido a concentrarse en lo que sus computadoras determinaban que harían mejor, y la granja moderna se ha convertido en un negocio o, para agricultores con poco terreno, en meramente un pasatiempo.
Journal Article
Commentary on Merle C. Prunty’s Idle Rural Land Phenomena in Madison County, Georgia
For three hours or more poor Charles sat goggle-eyed while Merle and I did furious battle about choice of words, sentence structure, logical argumentation, syntax, and a host of other fine points of style about which good editors and good writers care passionately, but about which poor writers are woefully innocent. [...] at the end of the long and exhausting session, he turned to me and paid me the high compliment of saying, \"You know, Fraser, you just might be a pretty good editor.\"
Journal Article