November 21 has repeatedly marked inflection points that shaped how the United States grows, moves, regulates, and labors for its food. From the signing of a compact that underwrote the first English farming communities in New England to modern laws that opened federal files to public scrutiny and expanded workplace protections, this date threads together the governance, transparency, and infrastructure that still define American agriculture.

1620: A compact that set the ground rules for farming a new colony

On November 21, 1620, in today’s Gregorian calendar (then November 11 by the Julian calendar in use in England), the passengers of the Mayflower signed the Mayflower Compact just off Cape Cod. Though remembered primarily as a political document, it created a “civil body politic” that enabled the settlers to organize land use, labor, and resource allocation—prerequisites for an agricultural foothold at Plymouth.

The Compact’s immediate legacy for agriculture was order: a framework for making communal decisions about planting, food distribution, and later the apportionment of plots. Within a few seasons, colonists shifted from largely communal work to household allotments (notably in 1623), a change many contemporaries credited with boosting productivity. Survival, however, depended on expertise and crops that were not English at all. Wampanoag agricultural knowledge—especially the cultivation of maize and regionally adapted methods like intercropping and soil amendments—was essential to that first successful harvest in 1621 and to the colony’s early stability. The Compact, then, can be read as agriculture’s first “governance document” in New England: it did not describe how to plant, but it made collective decisions about land and labor possible.

1974: Transparency becomes a farm policy tool

On November 21, 1974, Congress enacted major amendments to the federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), overriding a presidential veto. Those changes tightened response deadlines, strengthened judicial review, narrowed the scope of certain exemptions, and made it easier for requesters to recover attorney’s fees. While FOIA applies across the federal government, its impact on agriculture has been profound.

Since then, journalists, researchers, and advocates have used FOIA to open windows into the workings of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and other agencies that influence farm life and food safety. FOIA requests have illuminated who receives farm program payments and disaster aid; how inspection findings at meat and poultry plants are resolved; where pesticide approvals intersect with emerging science; and how conservation dollars are allocated on the ground. Much of the modern conversation about farm subsidy distribution, environmental compliance, and food safety performance has been enabled by this access. In practical terms, November 21, 1974 is a milestone for “open agriculture”—the idea that citizens can examine the records of institutions that regulate their food system.

1964: A bridge that re-routed the region’s food

On November 21, 1964, the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge opened, linking Staten Island and Brooklyn. It was an engineering icon, but it was also a logistics pivot at the height of the Interstate era. By creating a direct connection from the New Jersey Turnpike, across Staten Island, and into Brooklyn’s expressways, the bridge gave trucks carrying perishable goods a new, faster path into New York City’s outer boroughs and onto Long Island—without detouring through Manhattan.

The effect on agriculture and food distribution was incremental but real. The bridge increased capacity and reliability for regional movements of produce, dairy, eggs, and meat from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and the Delmarva Peninsula into dense urban markets. It complemented the contemporaneous rise of containerized freight at Port Newark–Elizabeth and, a few years later, the consolidation of wholesale distribution hubs like Hunts Point in the Bronx. While the Verrazzano was not built for farms, it helped modernize the arteries that keep cities fed, cutting hours off certain routes and supporting the growth of supermarket supply chains that depend on predictability.

1991: Stronger remedies in the food and farm workplace

On November 21, 1991, the Civil Rights Act of 1991 became law, expanding the remedies available to workers bringing employment discrimination claims under federal law. For agriculture, which encompasses everything from small family farms to large-scale packinghouses and processing plants, the law’s significance lies in its reinforcement of accountability for covered employers (generally those with 15 or more employees) under Title VII.

The act enabled jury trials and compensatory and punitive damages in certain cases, raising the stakes for noncompliance. In the decades since, it has been one of the tools—alongside sector-specific statutes such as the Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act—that workers and regulators have used to address discrimination and harassment in agricultural and food-processing workplaces. Although exemptions and thresholds mean not every farm is covered, the law has shaped human-resources practices and compliance programs across much of the food system, particularly in larger operations.

Why these November 21 milestones still matter

Viewed together, the events of November 21 trace a through-line from governance to transparency, infrastructure, and labor rights:

• Governance: The Mayflower Compact did not make crops grow, but it made decisions about land and labor legitimate—an enduring lesson for local control and community buy-in wherever agriculture is practiced.
• Transparency: FOIA’s 1974 reforms laid the groundwork for today’s data-rich debates over subsidies, conservation outcomes, and food safety performance, giving the public leverage to ask how well farm policies work.
• Infrastructure: The Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge reminds us that highways and bridges are food policy by another name; when roads get faster and more reliable, supply chains for perishable goods become more resilient.
• Workplace rights: The Civil Rights Act of 1991 underscored that a competitive food system must also be a fair one, with remedies when workplaces fall short.

As the country navigates the next generation of farm policy—debates over climate-smart practices, consolidation in meatpacking, supply-chain resiliency, labor shortages, and the transparency of commodity checkoff programs—the echoes of past November 21 moments are audible. They argue that durable progress in agriculture tends to come from a mix of self-governance, open institutions, practical infrastructure, and enforceable rights. That mix is as relevant in today’s precision agriculture and global logistics networks as it was on a wooden ship off Cape Cod four centuries ago.