In 1909, the U.S. Bureau of Soils announced, "The soil is the one indestructible, immutable asset that the nation possesses. It is the one resource that cannot be exhausted; that cannot be used up." The claim was astonishingly bold-that nothing farmers did could affect the underlying health of their land.
Drawing on disparate influences like Wendell Berry, James C. Scott, Patrick Deneen, and Wallace Stegner, they argue that both big government and big corporations have squeezed small farms almost into oblivion, stripping American land of nutrients and health in the hunt for profit.
Olmstead speaks from personal experience: Her grandparents farmed a small plot in rural Idaho, but she has since moved to Virginia.
If the UMass Amherst researchers are correct, farms big and small across the American West could face a coming catastrophe, as the land is slowly stripped of its value.
In the leadup to the Dust Bowl disaster, the Department of Agriculture told farmers that settling and tilling the West could actually change the climate, making it more hospitable to farming: "The rain will follow the plow." This belief was profoundly misguided.
In the wake of disaster, New Deal programs funneled support to larger farmers, on the assumption that small farms were not sophisticated and efficient enough to use that support wisely.
Rural communities today continue to struggle with the same patterns of corporate consolidation, soil erosion, and subsidies for large farms.
https://freebeacon.com/culture/a-conservatives-crusade-to-save-americas-soil/
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