# Why are many farms in Kansas circular in shape?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-many-farms-in-kansas-circular-in-shape/370479>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [August 28, 2006, 1:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-many-farms-in-kansas-circular-in-shape/370479 "2006-08-28T01:28:11Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\
**Post date:** [August 30, 2006, 4:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-many-farms-in-kansas-circular-in-shape/370479/21 "2006-08-30T04:55:57Z")

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chiming in with \*\*Gorsnak \*\* here - **rjk** ’s post had several errors in just a few lines.

- only one of the borders of Saskatchewan has correction lines, not both - the eastern one with Manitoba has correction lines, but the western one with Alberta doesn’t.

- as **Gorsnak** noted, by the time settlement in Saskatchewan was booming, Canada had been in existence for forty years, and it was the Canadian government that was trying to create a Canadian national identity through settlement of the west. Ties to Britain were part of that identity, but to say that it just amounted to loyalty to England is a gross (and I would argue, inaccurate) simplification.

- and the Gov’t did so sell land, and so did the CPR in the railway belt, and so did the Hudson Bay company. Settlers who homesteaded could get one “free” quarter frm the governement - by investing three years of improvements in that quarter. If they did that, then they had an option to purchase another quarter from the government. Outside of that, they had to buy land from the CPR or the HBC, from the shares of land alloted to those companies as a condition of the transfer of the North-Western Territory from the HBC, and under the terms of the CPR Charter.

So maybe **Gorsnak** was a bit snarky, but the post he was responding to certainly was inaccurate.

- **Piper** , whose great-grandparents homesteaded in the 1880s.

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**Author:** ![Pushkin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ee59a6/32.png) [@Pushkin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pushkin)\
**Post date:** [August 30, 2006, 11:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-many-farms-in-kansas-circular-in-shape/370479/22 "2006-08-30T11:55:39Z")

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[QUOTE=Johanna]  
I flew over Saudi Arabia on the way to India and saw lots of big green circles in the middle of sandy desert. Talk about not sustainable…  
[/QUOTE]

Didn’t a few of these turn up all over the world on the google maps thread a while ago?

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**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\
**Post date:** [August 30, 2006, 12:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-many-farms-in-kansas-circular-in-shape/370479/23 "2006-08-30T12:00:03Z")

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[QUOTE=Pushkin]  
Didn’t a few of these turn up all over the world on the google maps thread a while ago?  
[/QUOTE]

I remember seeing a couple in Libya; [here](http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=libya&ie=UTF8&t=k&om=1&z=11&ll=24.1455,23.324661&spn=0.295741,0.686646) and [here](http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=libya&ie=UTF8&t=k&om=1&z=10&ll=26.9086,21.971283&spn=0.578011,1.373291)

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