Farm People Research Articles

The Hermit and the Fallen Sky

Long ago, neither here nor there nor elsewhere, two kingdoms went to war. One of these kingdoms was called Triassia. Suddenly all the soldiers of Triassia had work: training companies of boys to be warriors like themselves. The blacksmiths of the land labored day and night, making pikes and battle axes and armor. In the capital city, all of the nobles grew even grander in their finery, and even fatter. As for the farming people in the countryside, they were taxed more heavily than ever, and many starved. The smoke of brush fires and cannon loomed over the battlefields. Finally a sulfurous brown cloud covered all Triassia. A month went by, and never did the smoke clear away. The crops all failed. Many infants sickened and died. Now I must tell you that in that land, a mad hermit lived in a pit yurt, out on the alkali wastes. During the time of the endless smoke, he emerged from his hermit hole and walked among the farm people in his filthy rags. He talked to poachers and to herdsmen, to oat merchants and to hovel squatters, to milkmaids and to peddlers. He was mad. He'd talk to anyone. And he'd talk about one thing. The Hermit claimed that the sky had fallen, that there was nothing beyond the He believed that the sky had fallen specifically on him. Sometimes sobbing, sometimes gasping for breath, he bewailed his fate and asked strangers for aid. Get it off he would cry. Lift it from my back! Cut it loose from my hair! It chokes me! It smothers me! Don't just stand there! Help an old man! A grizzled barley farmer took his pipe from his mouth and spat on the dirt. Fool, he said to the Hermit. You're dreaming! The sky can't fall. still up there, somewhere, in back of all the smoke. You're the fool, muttered the Hermit. It's stuck to my head with cloud glue! It trails behind me for miles! Look for yourself! have you all gone blind, as well as mad? The farmer threw horse turds at him, and the Hermit took his complaints elsewhere. When the sky-crazed Hermit realized that none of his countrymen would help him, he walked to the capital city and demanded an audience with the King himself. Stay quiet, you old loon, a palace guard told him. Even if the King would see you, how could you prove what you say? The Hermit flew into a rage. This is too important for proofs and arguments! The sky will die down here! It must be hung up again! If the sky dies, so will we! The King must be told! In time, the story of the mad hermit found its way to the King's court, and to the ears of the King. The King ordered that the Hermit be invited into the palace. When this was done, the Hermit was bathed, deloused, and dressed in clean clothes. With his long, white hair and deeply lined face, the Hermit looked quite distinguished. Every Sunday afternoon, in the castle courtyard, the King heard grievances and handed down judgments. Monday was whipping day. The Hermit was placed on the Sunday agenda. While the King stood on a balcony, the Hermit described his difficulty with some eloquence. Great King, he pleaded, only you can put an end to this disastrous war. Only by your fiat can our nation redirect its energies to the urgent project of rehanging the sky. …

Role of agriculture in economic development revisited

While both Malthus and Ricardo viewed agriculture as impediments to economic progress, Mill and Marshall argued that the effects of diminishing returns to land could be offset. Mill emphasized that the progress of civilization, such as roads that reduced the cost of bringing products to market, and policy improvements, such as abolition of the corn laws, provided substitutes for farm inputs. Marshall argued that population growth could for a long time, through growth of organization and knowledge, offset the effects of diminishing returns. Had the insights of Colin Clark dominated the policies of developing countries rather than the implications drawn from the dual sector models and the pessimistic views of Prebisch, agriculture's contribution to economic development would have been enhanced. The efforts to tax agriculture to support import substitution policies reduced rather than increased economic growth. Agriculture has important contributions to make to economic development, but must receive even handed treatment if the possible contributions are to be realized. A major failure of all governments has been the unwillingness to recognize that agriculture is a declining industry and to adopt policies that would assist farm people to adjust to the decline in demand for farm labor.

Role of agriculture in economic development revisited

ABSTRACTWhile both Malthus and Ricardo viewed agriculture as impediments to economic progress, Mill and Marshall argued that the effects of diminishing returns to land could be offset. Mill emphasized that the progress of civilization, such as roads that reduced the cost of bringing products to market, and policy improvements, such as abolition of the corn laws, provided substitutes for farm inputs. Marshall argued that population growth could for a long time, through growth of organization and knowledge, offset the effects of diminishing returns.Had the insights of Colin Clark dominated the policies of developing countries rather than the implications drawn from the dual sector models and the pessimistic views of Prebisch, agriculture's contribution to economic development would have been enhanced. The efforts to tax agriculture to support import substitution policies reduced rather than increased economic growth. Agriculture has important contributions to make to economic development, but must receive even handed treatment if the possible contributions are to be realized. A major failure of all governments has been the unwillingness to recognize that agriculture is a declining industry and to adopt policies that would assist farm people to adjust to the decline in demand for farm labor.

Gloires oubliées et mémoires reconstruites : les guerres de Gumbu du Sahel (Mali).

C. Meillassoux — Forgotten Glory and Reconstructed Memories: The Gumbu Wars in the Sahel (Mali). Gumbu is on the edge of the Sahel, where sedentary farming peoples actively par-ticipated in trade and conflicts within this transition zone. Fighting first broke out between Gumbu and rival, neighboring, even related political formations. Alliances and conflicts were not based on ethnie groups. Through these wars, people gloried in their group and asserted their families' political ambition; the social wounds these wars inflicted on various parties have left lasting memories. The nature of this warfare changed as more powerful states (Segu, Masina or Dina) brought pressure to bear. These states, developing thanks to the Atlantic slave trade, came to arbitrate conflicts in this region. Their intervention—some- times at the request of one of the parties to a conflict, sometimes on their own—broke the warrior spirit of emulation and ended by placing valor in the service of El Haj Umar's military interests.

The Hatchet's Blood: Separation, Power, and Gender in Ehing Social Life

The ritual complexes of the Ehing, a farming people of southern Senegal, embody an elaborate set of prohibitions on social behavior and prescribe the general rules of Ehing social organization. Power is distributed and maintained in Ehing culture by the concept of Odieng (hatchet), which as a spirit acts upon human beings much as an ax does upon a tree, falling from above to punish its victims for transgression. Marc Schloss's ethnography of the Ehing is a study of the meaning of Odieng's power, explaining why its rules are so essential to the Ehing way of life.

Prospectus for a Cooperative Extension System in Education

This article reviews lessons learned from the agricultural extension model that may be applicable to the proposed cooperative extension service in education. The agricultural extension model is a user-oriented system linking knowledge producers through state extension specialists and county extension agents with farm people and other knowledge users. In education, the adopters of innovations may be organczations such as schools as well as individuals such as teachers and administrators; the impacts of the educational innovations are less clear-cut than in agriculture; and educational innovations come from practitioners, as well as from the educational research and development system.

The dietary habits of a Ghanaian farming community

This case study examines the specific techniques associated with household food processing and meal preparation, and the consumption patterns of the food farming people of Ayirebi, near Akyem Oda in southeastern Ghana. Changes and continuities in household dietary patterns are noted. Such micro level ethnographic studies of food processing and consumption are relevant for effective policy recommendations on development planning, particularly in light of current socioenvironmental and economic crises in Africa.

The Farm in American History

For over three hundred years the farm was one of the most signifi cant elements in American history (1). Americans have been a privileged people with an abundance of farm-produced food and raw materials, abounty beyond Ameri can requirements allowing export of sur pluses to other countries. Farming history is essential for an understanding of Amer ica's development. During the last thirty to fifty years dramatic changes came to agriculture amounting to a great transformation and the end of an epoch. We are : seeing the passing away of the farm as we have hitherto known it. The 1990 U.S. Census shows scarcely 2 percent of the 4.9 million of the population to be farm people and 2.1 million farms. That represents a monumental shift from the first census

CULTURAL TRADITION AND SOCIAL CHANGE IN AGRICULTURE

The development of agriculture in the past decades has been determined worldwide by modernization measures. Mechanization and intensificarion of production. rationalization of farm management and adaptation (0 urban-industrial lifestyles were the goals of modernization wh ich were also pursued by the various disciplioes of agricultural science. In so far as any attention at all was paid to farm people's culture, i.e. tbe totality of ways of life and rules of behaviour among the farming population (wh ich must be differentiated according to region), it was usually regarded as outmoded and the remnant of a tradition which exerted a disruptive influence on the moderniz3tion process. Ir was rural sociology in partieular which set itself the goal of overcoming and excluding such 'backward' cultural manifestations. In reeent years, bowever, analyses in the field of research ioto developing countries and cultural-anthropological studies have cast a new light on the significance of farming culture'. They reveal that in their interna! structures and processes, traditional regional cultures have usually successfully adapted to the needs of people and the demands of the environment. Frorn (his perspective, modernization measures may even appear as aretrograde step:

Agriculture, rural people, the state and the surplus in some Asian countries: Thoughts on some implications of three recent approaches in social science

To understand how States interact with farming people, we should disaggregate the State into activities, and into groups, with distinct functions or goals. Each activity (or group) may (1) increase, transfer, or extract surplus; (2) do so mainly from urban or rural people; and (3) recirculate surplus mainly to urban or rural places. To explore this, we examine three recent approaches: theory of rent-seeking, analytical Marxism, and coalition theory. Each approach offers insights, but also false trails. Three books, one representing each approach, are used to review State-farmer relationships in Asia.

Breaking New Ground: Oral History and Agricultural History

Lurline Murray recalled that the day her son's vocational agriculture teacher pronounced expansion the only hope for farm survival, she had replied, Well, I guarantee you, we will never put a mortgage on this piece of property as long as I live, unless it's a case of life or death. Twenty years later, other South Carolina farmers have gone under while Mrs. Murray and her son Julian have held on to their land, saved by a strategy of meeting as many of their own needs as possible, swapping work and sharing machinery with neighbors, and selectively adopting modern farming practices. In this effort, religion has been Mrs. Murray's bedrock. Asked to explain a surprisingly bountiful wheat yield, she answered, One plants, one waters, but God giveth the increase. The Bible says Paul plants, Apollos waters, but it's God that giveth the increase. And you can't outgive God. Faith has guided her decisions and her farming philosophy., In the past half century, farmers like Lurline Murray have experienced one of the most profound transformations in the nation's history. The number of farmers has fallen precipitously. Capital investment has soared as machinery and chemicals replaced draft animals and human labor. Government policy makers increasingly control farm decisions. As historians seek to understand the interplay between these structural changes and personal, family, and community life, they are turning to oral histories of people like Lurline Murray. Interviews allow farm people themselves to interpret the meaning of broad economic changes and describe the values that inform their lives. As a result, scholars are able to incorporate the experiences of ordinary farm men and women into agricultural history and to expand its terrain. A wealth of oral history resources is available to researchers interested in agriculture.2 Academic historians and local communities alike have sought to record the

The Changing Use of Mountains by a Farming People: The Krobos of Ghana

The Krobos are a people of Dangme stock who live in the eastern region of southeastern Ghana. They are farming people who occupy areas in the Accra Plains, the Akwapim Mountains, and the Afram Basin. The land of the Krobos is mainly lowland, but historically they occupied two major mountains - Krobo Mountain and Akwapim Mountain. This study examines the changing land use in these mountains and the history of settlement. Krobo Mountain was initially occupied because it provided a favourable place for settlement, for defence against invading enemies, for a burial ground, and it served as a symbol of unity. Later on, the mountain came to be regarded as an ancestral home, visited for an annual blessing. Akwapim Mountain is occupied only when population pressure makes it necessary to increase food production. Some areas have been converted from forest reserves to agriculture and there are also burial grounds for people who died an untimely death. On the whole, the Krobos use their mountain land in response to their changing needs.

The adoption and social impacts of information technology in U.S. agriculture

Abstract By 1986 (a decade after their invention) microprocessors had diffused to about 18 percent of all U.S. households and 6 percent of U.S. farmers. In addition to general consumer uses, farm households in the United States utilize microcomputers for such small business applications as record keeping, word‐processing, payroll handling, etc. A special application of microprocessor technology occurred in 1980–1981 when 200 Kentucky farmers participated in a trial of the Green Thumb Box, a video‐text system providing market, weather, and technological information. The nature of the information needs of U.S. farm people seems to fit well with the new information technologies built around the microprocessor, although little of this potential has yet been realized. Since that experiment, videotex has shown itself to have doubtful value as a channel for the distribution of agricultural information, leaving open the question of what might be the best technological vehicle for this audience. Research is needed...

Agribusiness and Professional M.S. Degree Programs in Agricultural Economics in the United States

American agriculture deserves most of the accolades it has received for its rich and productive history, especially in farm productivity. But a managerial crisis exists in agriculture (French). This blemishes the brilliant record of agricultural economists. Kellogg Foundation's Leadership Programs have been the most effective to date for upgrading agriculture leadership. They have brought broader social maturation to younger rural people, but unfortunately not leadership and wisdom for sound food and agricultural policy. And such a policy is vitally needed for better management. In fairness, these Kellogg programs were not designed to deal directly with management needs. They were targeted at farmers, not at managers of broadly based agribusinesses as defined by Goldberg and others (Woolverton et al., p. 1). Other contributions have not been nearly enough to avert the managerial crisis. Agribusiness has done some in-house executive education, and economists such as Emerson Babb and David Downey have effectively assisted these. Among the younger set, Randall Westgren at Santa Clara, Rob King at Minnesota, and Kerry Litzenberg at Texas have shown creativeness in agribusiness programs. Farm management had a rich university history. Its professional visibility has declined but may have increased recently in response to the farm financial crisis. The formal management education of both farm and agribusiness people has been weak. Priority placed on executive education by agribusiness industry has not been high enough. The Cooperative Extension Service has de-emphasized management. Thus, both formal and informal education have inadequately avoided a crisis. We have not taught enough modern business mana ement using the behavioral approach to management in marketing, finance, personnel, and production. Farm management and production economics were root priorities in this association. A few professionals got little association encouragement as they made pale thrusts into agribusiness management, so not many are into it. Erven reported in 1984 that sixty-seven agricultural economics departments showed only 5% of FTE's in agribusiness management and onl 15% in farm management. An equitable evaluation would inpute much upgrading of agribusiness management to non-land grant education.

Doris Ulmann, American Portraits (review)

other—for 37 years. Then, on an afternoon in June, sun-tanned and smiling, suddenly he sank onto the grass beside his garden ... We met in a garden and we parted in a garden ... He left on one of the few journeys we have not taken together." Winner of Berea College's 1985 Weatherford Award for Appalachian literature, Last One Home is the seventh of John EhIe's novels to be set in his native Western North Carolina mountains. Almost too much like Lion On The Hearth, Last One Home is the story of farm people drawn to Asheville by commerce; this, time, Pink Wright discovers life insurance and builds a financial empire. EhIe works in much early 1900s Asheville history—there is a sarcastic look at the city's development as a resort area, and one of Hallie Wright's contemporaries is young Thomas Wolfe. Last One Home is not the spellbinding story EhIe gave us in The Journey OfAugust King and The Road, but Last One Home is must reading for those of us who are longtime fans of John EhIe. —Garry Barker Featherstone, David. Doris Ulmann, American Portraits. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1985. Her own motivations were to express "the profounder meanings that lurk in wrinkled brows and bowed shoulders." —Hamlin Garland 1927 Garland's observation as noted in David Featherstone's Doris Ulmann, American Portraits sets the tenor for this examination of an artist's search for "types" in photographic portraiture. While some have described Ulmann as a documentarían, and others a pictorialist , Featherstone asserts that in the search for American "types" Ulmann functioned more as an ethnographer, "seeking to describe what existed and serving as a collector of raw sociological data." Rather than subject the reader to a diatribe of socioideomatic jargon however, the author instead allows Doris Ulmann to present her own views using a variety of excerpts from interviews and correspondence. The results are often fascinating as in this description of the picture-taking process: "Whenever I am working on a portrait I try to know the individuality or real character of my sitter and, by understanding him, succeed in making him think of the things that are of vital interest to him. My best pictures are always taken when I succeed in establishing a bond of sympathy with my sitter. When there is the slightest suggestion of antagonism, then my best efforts are of no avail." In addition to discussing the motivating factors in the artist's search for "types," Featherstone takes the time to address issues concerning the relationship between Ulmann and her close friend and traveling companion for nearly a decade, John Jacob Niles. Contained also are accounts of Ulmann's many photographic excursions including her trips to South Carolina to complete the photographs for Julia Peterkin's depiction of South Carolina Blacks, Roll Jordan Roll. Featherstone includes references throughout the essay 74 followed by an excellent oibliography. To be commended are those involved with the design, composition, and printing of this book. Not only is the text attractive, it reads easily as well with pages that are uncluttered and sections clearly defined. And the photographs ? The photographs are excellent. In addition to the illustrations for the text, the author has chosen seventy-four full page reproductions. It should be noted that at the time of her death, Ulmann had approximately 2000 glass plate negatives exposed but not yet developed. Several of these are reproduced in this book for the first time. I would agree with the University of New Mexico Press's assessment that Featherstone is successful in establishing a critical context in which to view Doris Ulmann's accomplishments , that is, "a photographer on the cusp of two distinct trends in photography—the romantic pictorialism of the teens and twenties , and the documentary of the thirties." However, in light of the number of textual errors given the essay's length, I must call to question the author's thoroughness. For example , according to the author, Doris Ulmann spent nearly the entire summer of 1933 shooting at the "Joseph G. Campbell" Folk School near Brasstown, North Carolina. A simple check of sources will reveal the actual...

Microdynamics of Contraction Decisions: A Cognitive Approach to Structural Change

The farm problem ... is primarily a problem of economic growth. The demand for farm products grows more slowly than the demand for nonfarm products; consequently economic growth requires a steady shift of labor and other resources from agriculture to other sectors. Since there is resistance to this shift, there are usually too many people in farming and as a result per capita farm income is depressed. -Houthakker, page 5

"Barbarous Strangers": Hessian State and Society during the American Revolution

ALTHOUGH THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY has always been a popular theme among American historians, no examnple has inspired us more than our own experience in the War of Independence. In comparing American with English society at the outbreak of the Revolution, we have never lost sight of the picture first drawn by the patriots themselves of New World equality and freedom challenging the inequities of a typical Old World mnercantilist oligarchy. Yet perhaps the greatest contrast with American values is provided by the government and society of Hesse-Cassel, the German state that supplied the British with most of their German mercenaries. In the last two centuries, we have moved little from the image first projected by Mercy Warren of the Hessians as barbarous stran-gers' who committed atrocities against the American freedom fighters but who were themselves the slaves of a typically corrupt and greedy despot. Contemporary American historians have been somewhat more sympathetic to the mercenaries themselves, portraying them as naive and oppressed peasanits, simple farming people who were either unwilling or unknowing pawns of their sovereign. There has, however, been far less reinterpretation of the regime that dispatched them to America. Only in this century have we acknowledged the bogus origins of Benjamin Franklin's Uriasbrief, in which the Hessian landgrave Frederick II purportedly decried the death of only 1,465 of his subjects at Trenton because the British paid him appreciably more for soldiers killed in action than for those who were merely wounded or captured.) Contemporary American historians still portray him as a greedy petty despot who sought British subsidies in order to finance a decadent court life and the needs of his one hundred bastard offspring. In retelling the old but unfounded story of the landgrave's bastards, respected

Ischemic Heart Disease Mortality in Iowa Farmers

Analysis of 62,000 deaths in Iowa men aged 20 to 64 years from 1964 to 1978 indicates that Iowa farm men younger than 65 years have lower than expected mortality for all causes and for ischemic heart disease. Using data gathered by the Iowa Lipid Research Clinics (LRC) Program Prevalence Study, we compared levels of known cardiovascular risk factors in farmers with those of nonfarmers residing in the same rural county. Farm men smoked less frequently (19% v 44%) and engaged in exercise more frequently (83% v 40%) than nonfarmers. Treadmill performance in farm men indicates a higher level of fitness in farmers. Farm people consumed more total calories and cholesterol, but drank less alcohol than nonfarmers. Farm men had significantly higher serum cholesterol levels. High-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels were also higher in farmers. However, when adjusted for age and exercise status, farmers and nonfarmers had similar lipid levels. The results of the LRC survey suggest that the lower mortality rates of Iowa farmers are a reflection of a life-style that includes vigorous exercise and little consumption of alcohol and tobacco.

Effects of the International Donor Community on Farm People

Effects of the International Donor Community on Farm People

The economics of being poor

Part 1 Most people are poor: Nobel lecture - the economics of being poor the economics of poverty in low income countries investing in poor people reflections on poverty within agriculture our welfare state and the welfare of farm people economic puzzles pertaining to proverty. Part 2 Investing in skills and knowledge: investment in human capital capital formation by education rates of return on education resources for higher education reckoning education as human capital equity and efficiency in college instruction are university scholars and scientists free agents? Adam Smith and human capital. Part 3 Effects of human capital: institutions and the rising economic value of man the increasing economic value of human time woman's new economic demands children - an economic perspective high value of human time population equilibrium investment in entrepreneurial ability a long view of increases in the value of human time.