Farming Shorts
Description: yee-haw, interjection: —used (as by cowboys or in imitation of cowboys) to express exuberant delight or excitement. The most common explanations for the origin of the phrase lie in old directional commands for horses: "gee" (pronounced with a soft /g/ as in genie) to go right, and "haw" to go left.
Description: The early 1920s saw many corn hybridization attempts, but since basic genetic theory was inadequate at the time, it took well over a decade before they could be considered successful. When corn hybrids finally became commercially available, farmers were still reluctant to adopt them, but thanks to hybrid innovators like A. F. Crow, that began to change as demonstrations and field observations were held. By the mid-1940s, demand exceeded production and the new hybrid seed industry was up and running. Thanks to hybrid seed, today’s farmers are able to produce 20% more corn on 25% fewer acres than they did a century ago, which might explain why more than 95% of corn planted today is a hybrid variant.
Description: Reddy Kilowatt is a fictional character that acted as spokesman for electricity generation in the United States for over 70 years. He is drawn as a stick figure whose body, limbs, and hair are made of stylized lightning bolts and whose bulbous head has a light bulb for a nose and wall outlets for ears. His primary purpose was to put a friendly face on the newfangled electrical systems that were commonplace in the cities in the 1920s, but rural areas remained chronically underserved as people had many misconceptions about electricity. In 1930 almost 90 percent of farms in the United States were still without access to electric service, so new messaging targeting farmers were deployed to win over skeptical rural residents.
