Making the Corn Belt: A Geographical History of Middle-Western Agriculture by John C. Hudson

Abstract

362 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Making the Com Belt: A Geographical History ofMiddle-Western Agricul­ ture. ByJohn C. Hudson. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994. Pp. ix+254; illustrations, maps, notes, index. $35.00. Everyone knows that the phenomenally productive Corn Belt was a product of the hardworking, profit-oriented Yankee farmers who sweptinto the area and took itover from the lazy, shiftless southerners who were content to raise a little corn and let their hogs range in the river bottoms. Right? Wrong.John C. Hudson shows us how wrong as he explains the role of regional culture in the making of the Corn Belt. By bringing a geographer’s sense of place to a historian’s sense of time, Hudson makes a major reinterpretation ofits history. Hudson’s main argument is that the Corn Belt resulted from the transfer of agricultural habits—essentially the practice of fattening hogs and beef cattle on corn—from the Upland South’s five islands of good agricultural land: the Scioto and Miami valleys of Ohio, the Bluegrass of Kentucky, the Nashville Basin of Tennessee, and the Pennyroyal Plateau along and north of the Kentucky-Tennessee bor­ der. Hudson builds his argument for human cultural factors chrono­ logically and geographically, beginning with Native American inhab­ itants of the Upland South who, when driven out, left their conquerors fertile river bottoms cleared by fire and marked by trails from driving game. He meticulously traces the 19th-century origins of Corn Belt Dent corn, the Poland-China hog, and the feeder live­ stock marketing system that southerners brought to the Midwest. As settlers and their children migrated westward, the Corn Belt ex­ panded, until it was checked by the aridity of the Great Plains and the short growing season of the upper Midwest. Diverging somewhat from his thesis of human migration as the engine of change, Hudson explains the subsequent specialized de­ velopment of the Corn Belt as resulting from the expansion of rail­ roads, the invention of drainage technology, and improvements in animal breeding. When consumer taste for a leaner hog and the westward movement ofcattle feeding in the 20th century threatened the Corn Belt’s economy, midwestern farmers responded by plant­ ing soybeans and high-yielding hybrid seed corn which they shipped overseas. Hudson concludes speculatively about the future of sus­ tainable agriculture in a Corn Belt reliant on biochemicals and gov­ ernment set-aside programs. This book provides a much-needed corrective to simple stereo­ types that have haunted the history of the Midwest. By crediting southerners with the success of Corn Belt agriculture, the work will change the way historians view the settlement and economic devel­ opment of the Midwest and of American agriculture in general. Hudson shows how paying attention to cultural hearths and migra­ tion patterns can solve historical puzzles and allow for a more nuanced version of the historical past. By seeing farming practices as TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 363 habits that humans carried to new environments, and new breeds of plants and animals as purposeful innovations, not mere accidents, Hudson trenchantly illuminates the relationship of technology and culture. The author can be criticized for weighting the southern influence too heavily when he asserts that “there was no significant Yankee influence in creating the region” (p. 103). Instead of awarding credit to either northerners or southerners, one could argue that the Corn Belt’s prosperity is due precisely to the amalgamation of diverse cultures. Indeed, many regions of the Midwest were settled by a mixture of migration streams, where the Yankee store was as important to the region’s economy as the corn and hogs that farmers produced. Finally, although the scope is broad, the dense detail of this specialized monograph at times obscures the underlying argu­ ment. Nevertheless, the book contributes to the new rural history which cares less about technology than the cultures of capitalism. It successfully marries technology and culture to explain the history of the Corn Belt, a core region that has come to symbolize the prosper­ ity of America itself. Susan Sessions Rugh Dr. Rugh is assistant professor of history at St. Cloud State University. She is com­ pleting a book on the...