Agrarian USA

[All Rounder]

Seeing how industrial the USA is today, is it possible to keep or turn the USA into a agrarian society for more than hundred years? And if so, what could the changes be to the world as a whole (without such a major power, the world would be changed in someway).

 

[Luxendarc6]

According to the USDA, this is OTL.

The USA started out agrarian in 1766, and appears to have stayed above 50% until 1875, which is over 100 years. You'll need to specify the time period more, IMO, as the only way I can see post-2000 USA being majority agrarian is after a nuclear war.

 

[AcaciaSgt]

I think you need a US that doesn't have the old Northwest and/or the Northeast. Otherwise, as those regions grow and industrialize, the %'s will shift given enough time. Unless you set your bar low enough for the needed %, since as mentioned, staying above 50% for a hundred years was reached OTL.

 

[Mike Stearns]

Maybe Franklin gets what he wants the turkey becomes the national bird of the United States?

 

[JorgeGG]

Seeing how industrial the USA is today, is it possible to keep or turn the USA into a agrarian society for more than hundred years? And if so, what could the changes be to the world as a whole (without such a major power, the world would be changed in someway).

Short answer: impossible

Lets see you are talking of:
1) No New England as part of the United States. By the 18th century this region alone gathered most of the shipbuilding, commerce and early industrial output of the 13 colonies.
2) No industrial development (really?, in the middle of the Industrial Revolution)
3) Cash crops and agricultural exportation colonies with cotton, grains, coffee and tobacco as the main source of revenue. It looks a lot like South America in the 1810s.
4) with lots of cotton you can converted in products with added value such as clothes and fabrics. No way to stop mechanized mills and the added value and demand they provide.
4) Even if they reverted from freedom of commerce to a heavy tariff protection to hinder the importation of industrial goods they would still need to provide themselves with them for basics things. For example to ship and transport of goods cheaply.

 

[Alex Zetsu]

You'll need to specify the time period more, IMO, as the only way I can see post-2000 USA being majority agrarian is after a nuclear war.

How about 75% of the GDP being agrarian up until 1930 (100 longer than OTL)?

Cotton mills and stuff would still add "less value" to the cotton per blale than the value of cotton vs the water and seeds that went into the farm in the first place. So that's "agrarian plus" that's still mostly agrarian.

 

[AcaciaSgt]

Yeah, that totally needs the US to not have much of the north... or expanding beyond the Mississippi... or both.

 

[ramdomperson]

Maybe if a reverse civil war occurred. In this alt civil war, the planter elite maintain control over legislature until say, the 1880s, causing the industrialized northern states to secede and win independence, leaving behind a USA based in the southern agrarian states.