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Geographically speaking: The gains in pain come mainly in the Plains by Wylie Harris (Friday, Aug. 27, 2004 -- CropChoice guest commentary) -- Lately the rural – formerly agricultural – United States keeps popping up in the news. The attention is appropriate. The last time the Great Plains got this much coverage was also the last time it hemorrhaged so many people, in
the dark days at the pit of the Great Depression. Between 1980 and 2000, nearly 700 U.S. counties lost 10 percent or more of their residents. Color them in on a map of the nation, and you get a broad band from Texas to North Dakota, straight up the middle of the Plains, with smaller pockets of color in other
rural places, like Appalachia and the Missisippi Delta. That population loss
is what most of the media buzz is about, along with the economic decline that
plays either chicken or egg depending on how you pluck it. Political pundits
have been buzzing lately over the chance that the rural vote, in a turn against the incumbent, might throw this year's presidential election to the challenger. To Harpers magazine, this makes sense; Thomas Franks wondered,
in a recent article there, why Loup County, Nebraska, with the lowest per
capita income of any county in the country, handed a 75 percent landslide to G.W. Bush in 2000. But when Clinton took office, Loup County wasn't the poorest; its per-capita income dropped by over 40 percent after that – while the national
average was rising by the same amount. During those same 8 years, only 24 U.S. counties saw their per capita incomes decrease. Six of them were in
Nebraska; Texas was in second place with five. Sixteen of the 24 were in the Plains. With a record like that, there's not much to back up Democrat's claims that the rural Plains vote Republican against their own best interests. It's not that the GOP is free from blame for the Plains' economic misery – rather, they can only claim partnership in it. Harpers isn't the only publication missing the larger picture behind the
decline of the rural U.S. National Geographic recently offered its own take on the changing Plains. The article depicts disappearing family farms and rural communities as a tragic but inevitable sacrifice on the altar of
progress, but finds bright spots in the comeback of the native grasses and buffalo, and the fact that Native American populations on the reservations are increasing again for the first time in a long while. Taking a longer
view, a devilishly circular irony pops up in that portrayal – namely, that
the cowboys and the Indians have traded places. When the U.S. Army was busily clearing the Indians out of the farmers' way, the same rhetoric of progress and sacrififice was invoked, with about as much truth, to salve the national conscience. As Wendell Berry and Wes Jackson have written, rural folk are the new "redskins" – "surplus people" in the way of progress. (See 'Redskins, rednecks, and ragheads: Thoughts on apophenia and inevitability' at http://www.cropchoice.com/leadstry.asp?recid=2676) Berry's objections to National Geographic's presentation of farming and
farmers go back decades. In his book The Unsettling of America, Berry took
exception to a 1970 Geographic article featuring "The Farm of the Future." Feeding its cattle mechanically in "multilevel pens" to "conserve ground space," that future farm's present-day incarnation is an environmental and
social disaster known as a feedlot. The 1970 article eagerly anticipated the
arrival of such an arrangement, predicting only the best of outcomes. Three
decades on, the current one chronicles the less-rosy realities – giant feedlots seem to pop up in advance of declining per capita incomes as faithfully as GOP presidential vote majorities followed them in 2000 – but
refrains from acknowledging the irony of the contrast between them and the warm welcome that the same publication gave factory farms back in 1970. For his part, Wes Jackson actually appears in the current Geographic article,
describing his Land Institute's efforts to breed a mixture of perennial crop
plants whose permanent roots will hold soil the way the current mix of annual
ones can't. The story presents other visions for the Plains' future, like
Frank and Deborah Popper's Buffalo Commons, which would send herds of bison
grazing over abandoned farmsteads. The article may wear blinders for its
gaze into history, but its eyes for the future are, as in 1970, wide open and
full of roses. A Plains full of perennial grainfields and grazing bison is an enchanting vision, one worth the striving. But it will be realized on a longer timeline, if ever; Jackson himself sees the Land Institute beginning
to attain its goals on a quarter- to half-century horizon. Meanwhile, neither Geographic nor Harpers pays any mind to practical
alternatives that are working, and keeping their practitioners in place on
the land, in the here and now. Promising legislation crops up here and there, and Geographic does mention the so-called New Homestead Act, introduced in
2002 and again in 2003 by a bipartisan covey of rural senators. The Act
would offer incentives, including college financing, home loans, tax breaks,
and venture capital, to individuals and small businesses willing to stay in,
or move to, rural counties with dwindling populations – but it's sat firmly
in committee since its introduction. At the state level, Nebraska balances
its dubious honor as the state with the highest number of declining-income counties in the country, against the fact that it also has more farmers under the age of 35 than its neighbors. For that, many credit Measure I-300,
which, like similar laws in a handful of other states, prohibits corporate
ownership of farmland. Meanwhile, in a time-honored tradition, enterprising
farmers are figuring out ways to help themselves when the government drags
its feet. Organic farming, typically perceived as the province of small fruit and vegetable growers close to upscale urban markets, also works for commodities like corn and soybeans. In fact, it works so well that as often as not,
organic commodity farms are more profitable than their conventional counterparts – even without price premiums. This is partly due to lower
production costs, with no money spent on synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, and partly due to greater drought resistance stemming from the higher organic matter content, (and thus water-holding capacity) of
organically-farmed soils. Organic ranchers commonly see similar profit increases, for similar reasons, to those of organic farmers. Those who
fatten their animals on pasture, rather than feeding them grain, can also end
up creating more favorable wildlife habitat almost as a side effect of their
practices. The growth of organic farming is rivaled by that of direct marketing. Selling locally often carries similar economic advantages, enabling farmers to capture all the value of their product rather than passing it along to
wholesalers and retailers. Direct marketing can also offer a sorely-needed
shot in the arm for rural communities' flagging economies, keeping cash
circulating locally. They can even be seen as a form of insurance, creating
means of getting people and their food together when the oil, at the end of a
process that truly is inevitable, finally runs out. Examples like these clearly convey the message that the decline of rural
communities isn't inevitable – just profitable for those calling the shots,
whichever side of the aisle they occupy. They're also a powerful
illustration of how the various "securities" – national, "homeland,"
economic, and food – that so preoccupy the national debate, all are fundamentally advanced by the simple expedient of people growing people's
food closer to where they eat it. About the Author - Wylie Harris ranches with his family on their fifth generation cow-calf operation in Texas. At Texas A &M, he is working on range ecology. He is also a member of the 2003-2005 class of Food and Society Policy Fellows, a national program funded in part by the Kellogg Foundation, administered by the Thomas Jefferson Agricultural Institute and the Institute of Agriculture and Trade Policy. | |
