Stories of the Land: Diverse Agricultural Histories in the U.S.
Overview
Stories of the Land features more than 70 public radio and television programs broadcast over 65 years – from 1954 to 2019 – that explore many aspects of agricultural life from the perspectives of diverse populations and locales in more than 30 states throughout the U.S. Links to more than 110 additional related programs also are included. The exhibit was curated by Mariah E. Marsden, a 2022 Library of Congress Junior Fellow, folklorist, and Ph.D., Ohio State University. We are grateful to Christine Fugate, Ariana Gerstein, Chad Heartwood, Shaena Mallett Heartwood, Monteith McCollum, Asad Muhammad, Richard Rasch, Hannah Weber, and to an anonymous reviewer for their help.
How to Navigate the Exhibit
After a brief introductory section on U.S. agricultural history in the twentieth century, this exhibit is divided into pages called Anchors: broad, abstract concepts that pull together stories from a wide range of agricultural histories and practices. This thematic arrangement highlights ways the stories intersect and diverge by drawing the broadcasts into conversation with one another. The anchors assembled here—Land, Work, Environment, Culture, Practice, and Politics—explore different dimensions of agricultural experience across a diverse array of public broadcasting programs, often centering shared issues of disenfranchisement, visibility, mobilization, and loss. Each anchor has additional concepts nested beneath it to highlight certain enduring issues. Particular broadcasts have been featured and are included in the interactive map at the top of this page, while others are listed on the anchor pages for further exploration.
As you go through the pages, you’ll notice linked words that serve as pathways to other anchors in the exhibit, highlighting how these topics are interconnected. Explore them as you consider the conceptual network brought to light through these shared ideas — there’s not a single path through the exhibit. Feel free to wander.
Agriculture in the Twentieth Century: A Brief Introduction
By the 1900s, agricultural practice in the United States was undergoing a transformation. The last half of the nineteenth century saw the formation of land grant colleges and universities dedicated to agricultural advancement and research. The period also marked the beginning of the sharecropping system under which many formerly enslaved people and poor whites worked as tenants under contract on large farm properties with little hope for economic advancement or acquiring their own land due to the oppressive credit system that also developed.1 Contract farming, often identified as characteristic of developing nations, later would dominate the U.S. pork and chicken industries.2 This dichotomy of progress and repression carried over into the next century as industrial agriculture became a force to be reckoned with and farming movements such as the Grange gained political clout as they collectively explored the potential of new advancements in technology and scientific study.
Historian Deborah Fitzgerald analyzes the origins of the industrial mindset in Every Farm a Factory: The Industrial Ideal in American Agriculture, noting how attitudes about farming were shaped by the ideals of productivity and efficiency:
In American agriculture, industrialization began as a logic of production, almost a philosophy. For some it was a principle that unified a disparate collection of observations, practices, and problems. For others it was a road map that offered different directions from old-fashioned traditionalism to modernity. For still others it was a mantra that promised far more than it could deliver.3
On many farms in the 1920s, industrialization took hold. New, affordable tractors replaced horse-powered implements. County extension agents promoted standardized recordkeeping. Educational programs at state universities trained the next generation of farm managers, agricultural engineers, and economists. Large-scale mechanized farming operations reflected the growing economic power of the farm sector.4
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However, the economic and environmental crises of the 1930s would challenge industrial optimism in fundamental ways. The Great Depression and Dust Bowl indelibly changed the country’s agrarian landscape as hundreds migrated from failing farms to urban cities in hopes of new opportunities. At the same time, New Deal-era programs aimed to settle the instability of agricultural markets through subsidies and land deals to farmers even as vulnerable sharecroppers and tenants were overlooked and even harmed by policies that favored landowners.5 Even in the midst of this turbulence, the industrial mindset continued to gain traction as more and more rural areas acquired access to electricity through the Rural Electrification Administration.
Mid-century agriculture was shaped by the impact and aftermath of World War II. Due to a labor shortage during the war, the U.S. government implemented the Braceros Program in 1942: a series of international agreements that allowed Mexican workers to fulfill short-term labor contracts for landowning growers and other owner-operators in the U.S. The harsh working conditions and low wages for the braceros meant that the program, which ended in 1964, left a shadowed legacy that echoes in the plight of farm workers today. Many immigrants who came to the U.S. as braceros later established their own farms in regions throughout the U.S. despite facing systemic exclusionary challenges.6
The final decades of the twentieth century hearkened seismic shifts in both the economic and social practices of farming. The 1970s saw the implementation of environmentally conscious legislation as air pollution and contamination came under federal scrutiny. The Red Power civil rights movement and the years following the 1969 Occupation of Alcatraz mobilized Native American activist groups to push for the reclamation of land and water rights. The farm crisis of the 1980s—brought on by a combination of financial, environmental, and social conditions—rocked agricultural communities as farms were foreclosed, lenders withdrew financial support, and prices plummeted due to a production surplus after the 1970s boom. And the discriminatory practices of farm-related organizations came under fire, such as in the Pigford v. Glickman (1999) class-action lawsuit leveled against the U.S. Department of Agriculture regarding systematic discrimination against Black farmers applying for aid.
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A new logic now competes with the industrial mindset cultivated in the previous century: sustainability. Sustainable agriculture prioritizes the environmental effects of farming, emphasizing the importance of conservation and preservation. Water, soil, and other natural resources are understood to be limited and significantly impacted by climate change. The long-term effects of chemical applicants continue to come under scrutiny. New advancements in biotechnology, GPS coordination, and robotic systems have changed the day-to-day labor of farming. But the broader decline of small farming in favor of large, consolidated agribusiness is not a new trend. It continues to impact communities, especially affecting Black and Indigenous farmers and agricultural workers of color in the process.
Public Media and Farming
A broad-strokes overview of twentieth century agricultural history fails to capture the diversity of agricultural work in the United States. Far too often, the stories that dominate public conversations confirm preconceived notions about farming as a white, masculine experience. We’re introduced to these ideas through media: television shows such as Green Acres (1965–71), films such as Field of Dreams (1989), and, more recently, RAM Truck’s “God Made a Farmer” Super Bowl commercial (2013). A “cultural sensation,” this pickup truck advertisement featured a 1978 recorded speech by conservative broadcaster Paul Harvey overlaying still images of farmers at work in barns, fields, and pastures—notably absent, however, were depictions of Latino farm workers, who make up the majority of agricultural labor in the U.S. As the authors of Rooted Resistance: Agrarian Myth in Modern America point out, “While paying tribute to the spirit of the farmer as a binding force in national identity, RAM displaces pressing questions about the future of food, farming, and rural communities.”7
Public broadcasting offers us a different kind of record through which to explore agricultural history, one that often elevates local stories amidst events happening at a national scale. “It has become increasingly clear,” writes media historian Josh Shepperd, “that noncommercial media provides unusual access to the history of social, political, and cultural events.”8
This collection offers stories from local stations that sometimes are the only remaining historical record of people, places, and practices. Ultimately, this exhibit aims to explore not only the diversity of agricultural work but also to evaluate how we talk about that work: what ideals are invoked, what experiences are prioritized, what is relegated to the margins.
Featured Item
A Note on Scope
While wide-ranging, this exhibit does not purport to offer a comprehensive account of American agricultural practices over the years it covers. At the time of this writing, the AAPB collection contains more than 170,000 programs and related audiovisual resources from hundreds of stations, producers, and archives, but it by no means is representative of the many millions of programs that have been broadcast by thousands of public radio and television outlets during this timeframe. The topic of ethnicity in twentieth-century American agriculture, for example, while covered in some programs profiled in the exhibit, is not fully explored. The AAPB collection continues to grow, however, and we hope in the future to collect and archive programs that will further enrich our understanding of agricultural histories and practices.
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Exhibit Sections
Research Notes
Curator
