American Agriculture: From Farm Families to Agribusiness

Abstract

Mark Wetherington's entry in the Rowman and Littlefield American Ways series joins a growing list of titles by acknowledged experts introducing students and general readers to critical topics in American history that impinge on current issues of our day. That agriculture has been included alongside treatments of such high-visibility issues as racism, immigration, the radical Right, and environmental activism speaks volumes about the importance attached to farming and food by a broad swath of American society.Wetherington takes a comprehensive approach, tracing developments in American agriculture from the origins of Indigenous farming systems through twenty-first-century agricultural structures and their implications for the future. He unifies this long chronological sweep using the tripartite theme of “control, consolidation, and chemicals” to characterize the processes that have led to the current structure of American agriculture—the farm families to agribusiness transition described in the book's title.An introductory chapter lays out the overlapping angles encompassed by the three elements of his theme and how they apply to the progression documented in the book's eight chapters. Those chapters then build a narrative of Indigenous agriculture, antebellum European agriculture and its regional development in the North and South, the impacts of the Civil War and postwar national physical and market expansion, and the economic and technological transformation of agriculture through war, depression, and globalization in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In keeping with the intentions of the American Ways series, Wetherington brings attention to issues of diversity, and highlights the experiences of American farming among women, racial and ethnic minorities, small-scale producers, farm laborers, and others who often found themselves outsiders in the transformation to the dominant agribusiness model. He also focuses on the sectional diversity of American agriculture, demonstrating social, cultural, geographic, and agronomic differences and their intersections with political and economic developments in the nation's history.The presentation is a mix of narrative and essay that paints a very particular vision of US agricultural development; Wetherington makes no secret of his indictment of the current structure of US agriculture. Farming systems and farm policy have become subjects that evoke passionate views linked to agriculture's entanglement with Indigenous displacement, enslavement and other labor abuses, environmental damage and climate change, the rise of capitalism, and inequities in global food systems. Without question this litany of negatives reflects historical realities of US agriculture, realities that must be documented and understood, particularly where they reveal entrenched discrimination and exploitation.Yet the narrative also conveys a sense of conspiracy, suggesting a coordinated and linear effort by government and agricultural business interests to create the current conditions of American, and even global, agriculture. That perspective telescopes a breadth of political and economic change, particularly as the narrative moves into the mid-twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and erases the complex interplay of individual choices and events that can help readers contextualize the processes that have led to current conditions. It also juxtaposes ideas and events to imply links and motivations that on closer inspection would reveal complicated and even contradictory trends. For example, the occupation of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge by activist ranchers in 2016 is presented as an action in support of local control of grazing rights without noting the connection between that position and the resistance to efforts by federal land agencies to reduce environmental damage through stricter grazing land management.Similarly, Wetherington constructs his presentation of agricultural and trade policy in the final chapters of the book to build a case for wholesale policy change and a return to smaller-scale agriculture in the twenty-first century. One need not disagree with that ideal to wish that the narrative included a more nuanced explanation of the Farm Bill and trade agreements, especially the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and their influence on structural change in American agriculture, as well as more clarity on the sources and interpretation of the many statistics employed to make that case.Wetherington's focus on the dispossessed in American agricultural development provides an important perspective for general readers and students, one that is welcome and not often given such comprehensive attention in a broad survey. But general readers, and those who wish to use the book with students, should plan on supplementing the latter chapters with additional sources on the agricultural policies of the last century and their influence on the transformation of American agriculture since the New Deal.