The Land Remains: A Midwestern Perspective On Our Past and Future by Neil D. Hamilton

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Land Remains: A Midwestern Perspective On Our Past and Future by Neil D. Hamilton Jim Feldman Neil D. Hamilton, The Land Remains: A Midwestern Perspective On Our Past and Future. North Liberty, IA: Ice Cube Press, 2022. 344 pp. $24.95 (paper). In this expansive memoir, retired law professor Neil D. Hamilton draws insights from a career of teaching, research, and public service to discuss how American relationships with the agricultural landscapes of the Midwest have changed over time and how they must continue to evolve in the search for more sustainable social, economic, and ecological practices. Several themes run throughout the book: the tensions between public and private good; the outsized power of market forces; the need for a holistic perspective on land, water, and conservation; the disconnect between most citizens and the land; and the value of law and policy to guide conservation decisions. One of Hamilton's most valuable contributions is an update to Aldo Leopold's recognition that conservation requires more than just good public policy. Progress also demands the commitment of private landowners to better management and the willingness of citizens to recognize their own connections to the land. From this angle, he routinely defends small farmers, whom he sees caught between ruthless corporations and a disinterested and disconnected public. Hamilton draws on a tremendous range of sources. These include his childhood memories, family and local histories, and his own landownership decisions on an Iowa farm. To this he adds conversations with experts from industry, academia, and the farming community as well as the collected wisdom of key conservation figures from both the past and the present. He quotes well-known scientists and agricultural leaders and more obscure conservation figures such as Ding Darling and John Lacey. Hamilton employs a folksy writing style to blend these sources into chapter-length [End Page 210] discussions of ongoing conservation issues such as soil health, water quality, land trusts, and the better food movement. Although Hamilton spends considerable time documenting the poor state of current conservation affairs, the last third of the book takes a more hopeful approach. He suggests that all of us can contribute to the better food movement, and that consumers demanding better food will lead to improved land management. He explains how land trusts can protect both the economic interests of landowners and the health of the land. He concludes with the recognition that better land management provides a road map for addressing other intractable but interconnected problems: crises in mental health, social justice (rooted in historically inequitable access to land), and climate change. Facing these complicated issues, Hamilton suggests, requires a new perspective: "You can't ignore economics and still hope to make a better world … [You] have to recognize and harness economic forces … This is where the societal and economic necessity of addressing climate change becomes so significant. Taking positive steps on the land to address climate change provides the vehicle for integrating markets, money and economics into all the various efforts to create a better food and farming system" (315). Viewing the issues this way, Hamilton suggests, provides the chance to turn challenges into opportunities. Hamilton has much to say, and he draws a range of expansive conclusions about our connections to the land. Yet he rarely gets straight to his point, and the organization of the book can be hard to follow. In each chapter, he offers sections written from the first-person perspective of "The Back Forty" on his family farm ("The Back Forty on Lines, Boundaries, and Names"; "The Back Forty on Land, Law, and Imagination"). The goal of allowing the land to speak for itself is a worthy one, but these sections simply extend Hamilton's own ideas. The mixed-methods approach of blending observation, interview, and literature review makes for a comprehensive discussion but adds to the sense of disorganization. The title of the book promises "a Midwestern Perspective." What such a perspective might entail remains an emerging subject of scholarly and popular conjecture. Hamilton does not address this question, and his midwestern perspective has a decidedly Iowan slant that might not always translate to other regional issues and ideas. Wisconsin's dairy...