Across the decades, November 16 has intersected with pivotal moments that shaped how Americans grow, move, sell, and eat their food. From statehood and war to diplomacy, energy policy, and food manufacturing, the date offers a lens on how agriculture is bound up with the nation’s broader economic and political currents.

1864: As Sherman’s troops left Atlanta, a campaign reshaped Southern agriculture

On November 15–16, 1864, Union forces under Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman completed their evacuation and burning of Atlanta and set off toward the Georgia coast. The “March to the Sea” that followed targeted rail lines, mills, cotton gins, warehouses, and food stores that supplied the Confederate war effort. For rural Georgia and neighboring states, the campaign brought immediate, tangible agricultural losses: destroyed cotton bales, seized livestock, ruined fodder, and disrupted fall harvesting and milling.

Beyond the wartime devastation, the march accelerated the unraveling of the plantation economy. With enslaved laborers fleeing to Union lines and physical capital in ruins, the South reeled from a season of shock that, after the war, gave way to decades of restructuring. Sharecropping, tenancy, and new credit arrangements emerged in the vacuum. While the most intense destruction occurred along specific corridors, the signal was national: agriculture is inseparable from the logistics, labor systems, and political stability that surround it.

The lessons from 1864 still reverberate. Supply chains are fragile; when transport corridors or processing nodes fail, local damage becomes regional quickly. And when a region’s dominant crop—then cotton—loses infrastructure support, diversification becomes not just an economic choice but a survival strategy.

1907: Oklahoma statehood and the rise of a new farm powerhouse

On November 16, 1907, Oklahoma entered the Union as the 46th state, bringing into the fold a landscape already defined by farming and ranching. The territory’s late-19th-century land runs and allotment policies had drawn waves of settlers, while Indigenous nations and African American farming communities contributed deep agricultural knowledge and practice. Statehood concentrated political attention on farm-to-market roads, grain handling, and water development.

Cotton, wheat, and cattle quickly dominated the state’s agricultural profile. Oklahoma A&M College (now Oklahoma State University) and Langston University—both land-grant institutions founded in the 1890s—expanded their reach through experiment stations and, soon after, Extension work that diffused improved seed, cultivation, and animal husbandry practices. The inaugural Oklahoma State Fair in 1907 reflected an early push to showcase yields, animal breeding, and farm implements to a statewide audience.

Within a decade, Oklahoma was among the nation’s leading cotton producers and an emerging force in winter wheat. The arc that followed—mechanization, the Dust Bowl’s trauma in the 1930s, and the long-run shift toward wheat, beef, and later poultry and forage—illustrates how statehood-era investments in science, roads, and markets ripple across generations of producers.

1933: Diplomatic recognition of the Soviet Union and the long road to grain diplomacy

On November 16, 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt formally recognized the Soviet Union, establishing diplomatic relations after years of U.S. nonrecognition. While the immediate effect on farm exports was muted amid the Great Depression and domestic supply controls, the move reopened diplomatic and commercial channels that would matter greatly later in the century.

By the 1970s, the U.S. and the USSR became major counterparties in grain trade, culminating in the large 1972 wheat and feed grain purchases that reverberated through global markets. Subsequent policy swings—including the 1980 U.S. grain embargo following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan—highlighted the risks producers face when geopolitics shifts abruptly. The 1933 recognition laid the groundwork for those later dynamics: for American farmers, diversified markets are both opportunity and exposure.

1973: The Trans‑Alaska Pipeline Authorization Act and the cost of powering the food system

Signed into law on November 16, 1973, during the first oil shock, the Trans‑Alaska Pipeline Authorization Act fast‑tracked construction of the crude oil pipeline from Alaska’s North Slope to Valdez. Although the pipeline did not deliver fuel to farms directly—and carries oil, not the natural gas central to nitrogen fertilizer production—it became part of a broader push to stabilize U.S. energy supply in the wake of the OPEC embargo.

Energy costs sit in the bones of agriculture: diesel for fieldwork and transport, electricity for irrigation and cold storage, and hydrocarbons throughout processing and packaging. The policy response of the 1970s, including the Alaska pipeline, underscores how energy security and farm economics are intertwined. When energy prices swing, margins on the farm and at the elevator swing with them.

2012: Hostess liquidation sends a shock through food manufacturing supply chains

On November 16, 2012, Hostess Brands announced it would liquidate after a prolonged labor dispute, idling bakeries and distribution hubs and laying off roughly 18,500 workers. For growers and millers, the news landed as a reminder that the value of a crop is realized only when processors and brands can turn it into finished goods and get it to shelves.

Hostess was a major buyer of refined wheat flour, sugar, eggs, and oils—commodities sourced from farms and processors across the Midwest and beyond. While the brands and several plants returned under new ownership in 2013, the hiatus illustrated how concentrated processing capacity can amplify shocks up and down the chain, from basis levels for soft wheat to workload at regional mills and bakeries.

Why these moments still matter

• Infrastructure and logistics: From Civil War rail lines to modern pipelines and interstates, moving inputs and outputs reliably is as critical as growing the crop.
• Institutions and policy: Statehood, land‑grant universities, and diplomatic recognition change the rules of the game for farmers, opening (or closing) markets and services.
• Energy exposure: Fuel and power remain volatile cost centers; energy policy and global shocks spill directly into farm budgets.
• Market concentration: When few processors handle big volumes, plant‑level disruptions can ripple into commodity prices and farm cash flow.
• Resilience through diversification: Regions and operations that diversify crops, customers, and logistics tend to absorb shocks better—an insight as relevant in 2025 as it was in 1864.

Taken together, the history threaded through November 16 is a reminder that agriculture’s fortunes rise and fall not only with weather and yields, but with the institutions, infrastructure, and international relationships that surround the farm gate.