From courtroom decisions that defined how farm policy can be written, to geopolitical shocks that jolted grain and fertilizer markets, February 24 has repeatedly intersected with the story of U.S. agriculture. Here are three moments tied to this date that helped shape how Americans grow, trade, and govern their food system—followed by a look at the late‑winter work that has marked this week on farms for generations.

1803: A Supreme Court decision that opened the door to modern farm regulation

On February 24, 1803, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its ruling in Marbury v. Madison, establishing the principle of judicial review. While the case itself had nothing to do with crops or livestock, it created the constitutional framework that later allowed courts to referee the reach of federal and state power over agriculture.

That framework underpins nearly every modern question about how farms operate: who can regulate on‑farm water, how grain markets are policed, what counts as “interstate commerce” on a farm, which conservation standards attach to subsidies, and where agencies like USDA and EPA must draw their lines. Landmark agriculture‑adjacent rulings—from broad readings of the Commerce Clause that supported price controls and acreage limits in the New Deal era, to recent limits on environmental jurisdiction over wetlands affecting farmland—trace their justiciability to the authority announced on this day in 1803.

In short, the reason farm bills, conservation programs, food safety rules, and environmental regulations are routinely tested—and sometimes trimmed or affirmed—in court begins with the power of judicial review recognized on February 24.

1868: Impeachment and the unfinished business of Reconstruction agriculture

On February 24, 1868, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to impeach President Andrew Johnson. The immediate cause was his removal of War Secretary Edwin Stanton in defiance of the Tenure of Office Act. The deeper conflict, however, involved the direction of Reconstruction: who would control the terms by which the South rebuilt its political economy after the Civil War, and what rights formerly enslaved people would have to land and labor.

Those choices left lasting marks on Southern agriculture. Efforts at land redistribution were abandoned, and a plantation economy reorganized around sharecropping and the crop‑lien system took hold. Cotton monoculture reasserted itself on exhausted soils, capital became scarce, and tenancy proliferated. The agricultural landscape that emerged—shaped by policy and power rather than purely by markets—set patterns of farm ownership, indebtedness, and racial inequality that would echo through the 20th century and remain visible in land tenure debates today.

While the Senate would ultimately acquit Johnson, the House action on this day helps explain why Southern farming evolved the way it did after 1865 and why subsequent federal interventions—from New Deal parity programs to late‑20th‑century civil rights settlements in USDA lending—were both necessary and contentious.

2022: A war that rattled U.S. grain and fertilizer markets overnight

On February 24, 2022, Russia launched its full‑scale invasion of Ukraine. Two of the world’s breadbasket regions were suddenly at war, upending Black Sea exports of wheat, corn, and sunflower oil and disrupting global supplies of key fertilizers and natural gas.

For U.S. agriculture, the shock was immediate and multifaceted:

  • Wheat and corn prices surged to levels not seen since the late‑2000s commodity boom, with Chicago wheat futures spiking above $12 per bushel in early March.
  • Nitrogen fertilizer costs jumped as global natural gas prices soared, and sanctions complicated flows of potash and other inputs tied to Russia and Belarus. In parts of the Corn Belt, anhydrous ammonia prices climbed to well over $1,000 per ton—at times surpassing $1,500.
  • Planting intentions shifted. Facing high nitrogen prices, many U.S. growers signaled a pivot toward soybeans (a legume with lower nitrogen needs) and away from some corn acres. Livestock producers, feedlots, and millers scrambled to hedge feed risks.
  • Supply chains were re‑routed. The UN‑brokered Black Sea Grain Initiative temporarily eased flows, but repeated disruptions kept basis levels and freight logistics volatile, affecting U.S. export competitiveness and domestic basis patterns through 2023.

The war’s anniversary each February 24 is now a reminder of how quickly geopolitics can redraw U.S. farm budgets, insurance decisions, and trade strategies—even when fields here are thousands of miles from the front.

Late February on the farm: A season of sap, stock, and pruning

Beyond datelines and doctrines, February 24 also lands at a familiar point in the production calendar—a hinge between deep winter and the first stirrings of spring. Historical farm journals and extension circulars from the early 1900s onward routinely list this week’s work:

  • Maple sugaring in New England and the Upper Great Lakes as freeze‑thaw cycles begin to flow.
  • Calving and lambing in the Plains and Mountain West, with careful rationing and windbreak management to reduce stress in cold snaps.
  • Dormant pruning of orchards and vineyards before sap rise and bud break, paired with wintertime equipment overhauls.
  • Seed and input checks ahead of March insurance deadlines and spring tillage windows, a ritual as old as county fairs and as modern as variable‑rate prescriptions.

In that sense, “today in agriculture history” is as much about rhythms as it is about headlines: the quiet, repeated labors that knit one crop year to the next.

Why these moments still matter

Marbury v. Madison explains why farm policy ends up in court. The 1868 impeachment vote helps account for who owned Southern land and who did not—and why. The 2022 invasion of Ukraine illustrates how events abroad can remake U.S. input costs, acreage choices, and export routes in a matter of days. Taken together, they show that the forces shaping American agriculture on this date have spanned law, politics, and global markets, even as farmers themselves keep to the steady cadence of late‑winter work.