Creating American Farmland: Governance Institutions and Investment in Agricultural Drainage

Eric C. Edwards and Walter N. Thurman

The Journal of Economic History, 2025, vol. 85, issue 3, 806-843

Abstract: The Corn Belt is famously responsible for the bulk of U.S. corn production, and over half of its production comes from counties that rely on artificial drainage. We trace the history of this extensive investment in farmland and document the importance of a key institutional innovation, the drainage management district, which increased the land value of naturally wet eastern U.S. counties by 20–37 percent ($16.8–18.7 billion in 2020 dollars). While dramatically increasing agricultural productivity, drainage converted more than half of the 215 million acres of wetlands estimated to have existed in the United States at the time of colonization to agriculture.

Date: 2025
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