American crops for American people: statist agriculture, race, and environment on the Northern Plains

Abstract

My dissertation, "American Crops for American People: Statist Agriculture, Race, and Environment on the Northern Great Plains," argues that U.S. federal agronomy and standardized field crop agriculture driven by larger and larger corporate farms eliminated a diversity of ethno-agricultural practices and, ultimately, communities of Chinese, Japanese, and Mexican farmers. During the 20th century, the region was developed to produce massive staple surpluses, accumulate capital, and cement federal and corporate power in this extractive hinterland. Using documents from federal and local agricultural archives, I argue that the USDA and its corresponding outreach organization, the Cooperative Extension Service, defined the archetypal "American" farmer and simultaneously homogenized white European immigrants into American patriots, while ostracizing communities of color that fell outside this definition. Wheat and sugar beets represented an imagined and whitened national agrarian identity on the northern grasslands. While regional case studies on the intersection of agriculture and race exist, my work is the first to posit the consequences of USDA and land grant college agronomic practice as a reason for ethnic and racial homogenization in this part of the country. This scholarship is increasingly important as global agriculture must change and adapt to a warming world. It is my contention that these solutions must at the same time also address the sustainability of diverse peoples and communities that have deep connections to places and lands. If the standardization of crops relied on the homogenization of farmers and agricultural communities, then a more sustainable future must also include peoples that have been left out of myth of rural essentialism in America. I argue that understanding the pivotal moments of American agriculture in the 20th century could point us to a more equitable, diverse, and sustainable future. To accomplish this, I look to the genesis of wheat and sugar beet agronomic and agricultural systems on the Northern Great Plains and their environmental and social development in the late 19th and 20th centuries. My reconceptualization of agricultural history challenges the ideological foundation of a white American heartland mythology, instead revealing that agriculture in this country has always relied on multiethnic bodies and families.