On this date, November 15, several pivotal moments have shaped the trajectory of American agriculture—spanning war, environmental law, and the culture of sustainability. Together they trace how the nation’s farms, ranches, and rural communities have navigated conflict, regulation, markets, and stewardship across more than a century and a half.

1864: Sherman leaves Atlanta, and the South’s agricultural heartland becomes a battlefield

On November 15, 1864, Union Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman began his March to the Sea, departing a captured and largely evacuated Atlanta and splitting his forces toward Savannah. The campaign, designed to undercut the Confederacy’s capacity and morale, ran straight through Georgia’s agricultural backbone. For farmers, planters, and enslaved laborers, the march was an inflection point that reordered the rural economy for decades.

Sherman’s troops moved along a broad front, living off the land under Special Field Orders that authorized foraging of corn, fodder, livestock, sweet potatoes, and other provisions. Cotton gins, mills, and railroad lines—critical to moving crops and supplies—were dismantled or destroyed. Rail segments were heated and twisted into so-called “Sherman’s neckties,” while barns, granaries, and storehouses were emptied or burned to deny resources to Confederate forces.

The agricultural impacts were immediate and far-reaching:

• Crop and livestock losses: Corn cribs, smokehouses, and herds were primary targets for foragers, severing the Confederacy’s local food supply chains at a moment of scarcity.
• Destruction of processing and transport: Cotton gins and presses, along with thousands of miles of rail, were rendered inoperable, choking off market access for the region’s most valuable cash crop.
• Labor upheaval: Thousands of enslaved people fled to Union lines along the route, a human movement that upended the plantation labor system well before formal emancipation took effect in every corner of the South.
• Economic shock: Sherman later estimated the campaign caused roughly $100 million in damage (1864 dollars), a figure often cited by historians to illustrate the war’s direct toll on Southern agriculture.

In the postwar reconstruction, many former plantations turned to sharecropping and tenant farming, entrenching a new, often exploitative system that kept cotton at the center of Southern agriculture while binding landless families—Black and white—to cyclical debt. November 15, 1864 marks the day that transformation accelerated from theory to reality, as military strategy collided with the agrarian landscape.

1990: Clean Air Act Amendments reshape energy markets and ripple through the farm economy

On November 15, 1990, President George H.W. Bush signed the Clean Air Act Amendments into law, launching a suite of policies—on urban smog, acid rain, hazardous air pollutants, permitting, and stratospheric ozone protection—that would indirectly but decisively influence U.S. agriculture.

Two features changed the operating environment and markets surrounding farming:

• Oxygenated fuels and reformulated gasoline: The law required cleaner fuels in polluted metropolitan areas, creating demand for oxygenates to enhance combustion. Throughout the 1990s, fuel blenders turned to methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE) and to ethanol. MTBE’s water quality concerns led many states to restrict or ban its use in the 2000s, shifting the market more firmly toward ethanol. While the Renewable Fuel Standard of 2005 and 2007 eventually drove the largest gains, the 1990 law established the early oxygenate market that helped scale ethanol production—and with it, long-run demand for corn and distillers grains.
• Stratospheric ozone protection and agricultural fumigants: The Amendments’ Title VI empowered EPA to regulate ozone-depleting substances under the Montreal Protocol framework. Agricultural fumigants such as methyl bromide—used widely in soil pre-plant treatments for high-value crops—came under phaseout schedules in the 2000s, with time-limited critical-use exemptions as alternatives matured. The transition accelerated adoption of new fumigant chemistries, improved application practices, and non-chemical strategies like soilless media, barrier films, and crop rotations.

Other provisions reshaped the broader operating context. The law’s acid rain program curbed sulfur dioxide emissions, helping reduce acid deposition that had stressed forests and some watersheds. Title V operating permits brought large biofuel plants and certain feed and processing facilities into more formalized air-permitting regimes. For farmers, the combined effect was subtle but real: cleaner urban air policies altered fuel markets that touched the grain belt, and ozone-layer protections steered specialty crop systems toward different pest-management playbooks.

The numeric arc tells part of the story. U.S. fuel ethanol output, under a patchwork of tax incentives in the 1980s, hovered around a billion gallons at the time the Amendments were signed. By the late 2000s, after oxygenate markets matured and the RFS took hold, production had scaled to tens of billions of liters annually, linking Midwestern corn fields to the emissions rules first set in motion on this day in 1990.

1997–present: America Recycles Day spotlights the circular economy—including on the farm

November 15 is also America Recycles Day, launched in 1997 and now coordinated by Keep America Beautiful. While often framed around household materials, the day highlights an evolution inside agriculture as well: the drive to recover value from materials and nutrients once considered waste.

Key threads in farm-country recycling and resource recovery include:

• Ag plastics: From greenhouse film and mulch to bale wrap and drip tape, plastics have become integral to modern production. Collection and processing infrastructure has expanded unevenly but meaningfully, with pilot projects and regional facilities turning films and rigid containers into new products. The Ag Container Recycling Council’s long-running program for high-density polyethylene pesticide containers is a notable example of industry-led recovery.
• Nutrient cycling: Manure digesters and solids-separation systems convert waste streams into renewable energy and soil amendments, while composting captures organics from produce packing sheds, dairies, and specialty crop operations.
• On-farm metals, tires, and equipment: Formal take-back and scrap channels have reduced open burning and illegal dumping, improving air quality and reducing fire risk.

The agriculture tie-in to America Recycles Day underscores a broader shift: resilience now includes closing loops, reducing contamination in recyclables, and aligning end markets so that recovered materials actually move. The work is incremental, but each Nov. 15 puts a spotlight on progress and the gaps that remain.

Why November 15 still matters in the countryside

These moments are connected. Sherman’s march revealed how vulnerable agricultural systems are to shocks that sever logistics and labor. The Clean Air Act Amendments showed how environmental policy can reshape energy markets that, in turn, reshape farm demand. America Recycles Day reflects the steady normalization of stewardship as a pillar of competitiveness, not just compliance.

Viewed together, November 15 is a reminder that U.S. agriculture has always been about more than crops and livestock. It is infrastructure and law, science and markets, people and place—each capable of altering the others in lasting ways.