When agriculture was first attempted by the pioneers on the tough, heavy sod, it was thought that the prairie would never be good for farming. A "good" crop at that time yielded less than half the sown seed. It wasn't until 1846 that John Deere's Self-Scouring Plow, made of steel, not wood, was able to cut throught the grass and allowed agriculture to really take root in America's heartland. Corn was introduced by the Native Americans, and soybeans came in 1890 from the Orient.