Connected Growth: Wheat and Tenant Farms in Kansas, 1880-1925

The fast-paced contemporaneous growth of wheat and of tenant farms in central and western Kansas were distinctive trends from the late nineteenth century through the interwar years of the twentieth century. A challenging environment for crop production has been a usual explanation for the first; land speculation and disposition of lands granted railroads are usually explanations for the rise in tenancy. There was however, as this article argues, a link between the nature of the product and the options producers had to venture into its production. This link was inherent in the product itself: its markets, the transportation challenges associated with it, the processing required and the returns it yielded to primary producer and processor. For many Kansan farmers, the capital required to acquire their own land and necessary equipment was beyond their financial reach. For those Kansans (and out of state residents) with capital to invest, there were few practical alternatives to purchasing land to be rented.