USA HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -Because they had to bust through the “sod” before planting crops. Great Plains farmers were called sod busters. After ripping up the sod from their land, most sodbusters used the sod to build houses.

Detailed explanation-2: -The Prairie Provinces were settled by British, German Russians (many of them Mennonites), Ukrainians, and Scandinavians. Many of the immigrants were religious, thrifty, hardworking people who developed a strong attachment to the land.

Detailed explanation-3: -The government helped people to settle on the Great Plains. The government sold adults 160 acres of land for a small amount of money. If they could farm the land for five years, they could own it. A settler’s home and land was called a homestead.

Detailed explanation-4: -It comes from the sense of “busting” the earth, digging and turning it over before planting. A 19th-century John Deere plow shared the name. In the 1980s, a federal agriculture program called Sodbuster had the opposite meaning: it discouraged plowing land that was prone to erosion.

Detailed explanation-5: -The Plains were hard to live on. Many of the newcomers were used to living in villages and then walking or riding out to their fields to farm. But the Homestead Act required those claiming the land to live on it, and the act forced settlers to farm the land in 160-acre plots.