A new exhibit at the Barton County Historical Society Museum, “Agricultural Options on the Central Kansas Plains,” is on loan from the Coronado Quivira Museum of Lyons. Museum staff spent the first part of this week uncrating and installing the numerous panels in the exhibit hall and the library.
“It’s a really very nice, comprehensive display that is really the history of Kansas,”BCHS Museum Director Beverly Komarek said. “Kansas was settled by people coming here to acquire land and the government and the railroads helped them. It provided many an opportunity to fulfill their dreams, which is central to our agricultural roots.”
Panels describe the early beginnings of Kansas agriculture, starting in the 1860s with the Homestead Act and farming with horses, on to the introduction of tractors, through the Green Revolution of where farmers were encouraged to turn to chemical fertilizers, pesticides and hybrid seeds to increase yields, to the advent of central pivot irrigation, no-till farming, and up to the present day of precision farming.
The exhibit also looks at the social aspects of the farming life from the eyes of local farmers of Rice, Barton and Pawnee counties. Each panel provides bilingual interpretation in English and Spanish. A 20-minute video is also included.
The exhibit will be on location until the beginning of April.