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, 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

Fig 1. Russell Lee. Day laborer pumping up tire on tractor on large farm near Ralls, Texas. Nine tractors were used on this farm of four thousand nine hundred acres, 1939. Prints and Photographs Collection, Library of Congress. LC-USF33-012216-M1.

However, the economic and environmental crises of the 1930s would challenge industrial optimism in fundamental ways. The Great Depression and Dust Bowlindelibly 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.

Fig 2. ASIrobots. Autonomous compact tractors in a Texas vineyard, Nov. 2012. Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Autonomous_compact_tractors_in_a_Texas_vineyard,_Nov_2012.jpg.

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.

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.

Land

The point is that use does not indicate in any real way his idea of the land. Use is neither his work nor his idea. As an Indian I think: you say that I use the land, and I reply, yes, it is true; but it is not the first truth. The first truth is that I love the land; I see that it is beautiful; I delight in it; I am alive in it.

            - N. Scott Momaday, Kiowa novelist9

What is our relationship with the land we inhabit? How do we use it? Cultivate it? Conserve it? How do issues of displacement, dispossession, and dispute impact the way we see our place in the land? This connection is at once a question of philosophy, economy, spirituality, and ideology, and different groups have put forward competing land ethics while trying to answer these questions. This Anchor explores how those involved in agriculture express their ties to the land through ideas of Stewardship, Place, and Resources.

In the history of the United States as a nation, the debate about land ownership has often been framed around the issue of land use. The landmark Homestead Act of 1862 encouraged westward settlement, promising settlers land if they agreed to live on and “improve” the land through farming. This ideal of cultivation is often talked about as a social good, but what are the consequences of this mindset? What alternative visions of stewardship might we imagine? The Stewardship section highlights different perspectives on how to take care of and relate to the land from a number of voices and regions.

The diverse regional landscape of the U.S. is especially striking from an agricultural perspective: from swampy alligator farming in the South to the carefully lined rows of fruit trees in the Northeast. The Place section explores not only the regional differences in farming but, more crucially, how farm people from diverse communities express connections to place and land. Placemaking is at its heart an act of imagination, connecting one’s environment to abstract ideas like home and homeland. “Geography,” writes scholar Kent C. Ryden, “is clearly much more than buildings and dirt—it supports a complex structure of personal and cultural significance.”10 Here, too, you’ll find conversations about how the urban/rural divide becomes less clear as communities find new ways to ensure access to food and other resources.

The issues of stewardship and placemaking go hand-in-hand with the need for Resources. The acquisition and maintenance of land under industrial agriculture has relied on access to capital—often through government programs such as the Agricultural Adjustment Act (1938) or through private loans by banks and other lending agencies. But as we can see from twentieth and twenty-first century public programming, land loss is, at its center, a question of resource access. What do we consider to be a resource? What barriers do individuals and groups face when applying for agricultural aid? How do we provide for future generations of farmers?

Stewardship

Residents of the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota fight for the right to grow industrial hemp, as featured in “Standing Silent Nation” (2012).

Standing Silent Nation (dir. Suree Towfighnia, Prairie Dust Films, July 3, 2007).

This documentary, broadcast on the PBS series POV, follows the efforts of the White Plume family (Oglala Lakota) to cultivate industrial hemp for livestock feed, papercrafts, and commercial sale on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Having been legalized under tribal law, hemp was not only a valuable Resource in the community’s economic development but also offered a meaningful connection with the land through Labor. But backlash from the federal government led to raids, property seizure, and a legal battle for the White Plumes and others who sought to uphold Native sovereignty in the face of unjust Policies. “In our treaties with America,” says Debra White Plume, “we retained our sovereignty. It’s not something America gave us. Sovereignty is not something that can be given to anyone.” 

North Carolina Now (UNC-TV, Research Triangle Park, NC, September 30, 1996).

This local news broadcast includes a segment with interviews from Black farmers, historians, and extension agents in Tillery, North Carolina. They discuss how New Deal-era land allocation programs impacted Black farmers and the material and ideological importance of land ownership and access to Resources. “It was an opportunity for African Americans to own property, to actually not be dependent on the large white plantation owners for their livelihood,” says Gary Grant from the Concerned Citizens of Tillery organization. “It afforded them an opportunity to be independent. It afforded them an opportunity to set direction for their own lives.” 

The MacNeil/Lehrer Report, “Indian Sovereignty and The Longest March” (WNET/WETA, New York/Washington, July 13, 1978).

This episode of the MacNeil/Lehrer Report explores the settlement of reservation land by non-Native civilians and disputes over water access rights in northwestern states like Washington and Idaho. Those speaking on behalf of the tribes push back against the encroachment and infringement of treaty-guaranteed property, while non-tribal members express feelings of mistrust and suspicion. In the essay “Adaptation, Resistance, and Representation in the Modern US Settler State,” historian Walter L. Hixson discusses colonial anxieties that are often expressed during sovereignty struggles: “In an effort to reassert a sense of authority, the colonizer effects an inversion in which tribes are framed as colonizers […] demanding special privileges. Under this frame, the ethnic minority becomes the aggressor and the majority population the victims.” 11

The MacNeil/Lehrer Report, “Saving Farmlands” (WNET/WETA, New York/Washington, October 17, 1977).

This 1977 national report considers the issue of shrinking farmland as development rights to the land are bought and sold. Agricultural reporter Carol Buckland talks with farmers and residents on Long Island in New York, where the Suffolk County government stepped in to aid farmers by buying the rights to their land to ensure its agricultural use in the face of growing suburbanization. Those interviewed, such as John Talmage of Baiting Hollow, New York, justify its use as farmland and explain why government intervention is necessary, connecting with issues of food Resources and Place: “But also one might ask the question, is there some safety in having our production spread around a little bit? For instance, if something happened to our transportation system, […] there are a lot of people living on Long Island and having the reserve of the food production—at least some food production on Long Island—should add a little safety to living here.”

Place

City planners and residents share their experiences building a Black intentional community on old plantation land in this episode of Black Journal (1970).

“Farm Town” (Iowa Public Television, Johnston, November 22, 1985).

“This isn’t just a crisis of people; it’s a crisis of people and the land, and I don’t know where you separate one from the other. We say things about our roots. We talk about this as our homeland. We talk about sowing seeds to harvest hope. We are people whose culture and identity is rooted in the land and the people.” Rev. Karl Schlitz speaks on the impacts of the 1980s farm crisis and the decline of small Midwestern towns in this program from Iowa Public Television. Others interviewed emphasize how their landscape has changed in the wake of a struggling farm economy: closed local shops along main street, shuttered homes, and towns slowly emptying of people. More programs on the farm crisis of the 1980s can be found under Labor, Story, and Rhetoric, and especially under Additional Broadcasts Relating to “Politics.”

Bookworm’s Turn, “Interview with Pat Sackrey and Ellen LaRiviere on the New England Small Farmers Project” (New England Public Radio, Amherst, MA, August 30, 1979).

This radio broadcast features an interview with Pat Sackrey, director of the New England Small Farmer Project, and Ellen LaRiviere, a Connecticut hog farmer. Sackrey discusses the idea of regional self-reliance, encouraging agricultural growth in industries that typically do well in the northeast: dairy, raspberries, strawberries, tree fruits, and even grain in the Champlain Valley and Vermont. Regional networks are a part of how Sackrey and LaRiviere envision self-sufficiency, Harvest, and the management of Resources.

Black Journal, episode 26  (Thirteen WNET, New York, October 26, 1970).

The first segment in this television magazine program explores connections with the land through the story of Soul City, North Carolina: a former plantation that later became an experimental Black community. Here, land is discussed as both a resource and a site in need of resources; city planners and leaders express the need for development, both materially and socially, through self-sufficient economic and educational opportunities. The segment also connects with issues of Stewardship and Labor as locals discuss what it means to live and harvest tobacco on land intimately connected to the legacies of slavery. Scholar-activist Annalena Hope Hassberg further underscores this point in her introduction to We Are Each Other’s Harvest: Celebrating African American Farmers, Land, and Legacy. “There has been an unshakeable conviction among Black people,” she writes, “that true liberation requires landownership.”12

“The Urban Farming Movement” (Commonwealth Club of California, Hoover Institution & Archives, Stanford, CA, May 12, 2010).

We often think of agriculture happening in rural spaces, but scholars who explore placemaking practices have done productive work to complicate the seemingly concrete distinctions between “urban” and “rural” that are often drawn.13 This radio broadcast from the Commonwealth Club of California provides interesting examples of urban farm work as the panelists share stories about one-acre rooftop farms in New York, reading applications from prospective goat herders in the city, and the changing attitudes about the urban/rural divide when it comes to agriculture and food production.

Farmsteaders (prod. Shaena Mallett, in collaboration with milesfrommaybe Productions in association with American Documentary | POV, 2018).

Filmed over four years beginning in 2011, Farmsteaders presents an intimate look at the challenges faced by a family of dairy farmers in southeast Ohio trying to survive and succeed in a period of Industry change as corporate agriculture had displaced many small farms in the area. “Whenever some ‘where’ has a hold of you, that’s kind of a powerful thing,” Nick Nolan reflects in an elegiac mode of family farm Philosophy as Farmsteaders opens. Nolan, whose grandfather once owned the farm he and his family operate, and his wife Celeste, who never had thought she would become a farmer, struggled through years of losses until they succeeded with cheese production for regional buyers. In this Emmy-nominated documentary mix of romanticism and reality, the Nolans share with viewers the physical and emotional Labor of their daily lives, their connections with nearby communities where they sell their products, the meanings that farming has had for them, and the experiences of their children, Youth who like Nick, grow up working and playing on the farm. Producer/director Shaena Mallett also grew up on a family farm.

Resources

Featured Item

Wilson Lumia (Yakima) discusses the historical and social importance of fishing in the Pacific Northwest in this National Native News Special Feature (Koahnic Broadcasting Corporation, September 18, 1990). https://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-206-343r25ph.

National Native News Special Features (Koahnic Broadcast Corporation, Anchorage, AK, September 18, 1990).

What happens when there’s a dispute about which resource should take priority? The first news segment in this radio broadcast examines those impacted by the development of hydroelectric dams along the Columbia and Snake Rivers in the Pacific Northwest—particularly local tribes, who sought legal intervention to protect their land and fishing treaty rights. Wilson Lumia (Yakima) expresses his frustration, discussing his experience as a fisherman and the devastating effects of the dams on the Chinook salmon population: “They killed 90 percent to 80 [percent] of the juvenile fish going over the dams. We got to do something about the dams to save the fish.”

The MacNeil/Lehrer Report, “Family Farmer” (WNET/WETA, New York/Washington, March 9, 1978).

This national broadcast considers the decline of the idealized “family farm” Philosophy and approach to agriculture. The struggles are couched both as issues of Weather—droughts, freezes, and storms—as well as a strain on resources that makes it more difficult to retain their land. Of particular anxiety is the issue of inheritance: passing resources from one generation to the next. Here, there are echoes of the patriarchal farming approach as “sons” and “sons-in-law” are exclusively discussed as the heirs of farmland. But with a lack of prospective successors, family farms around the country continue to be absorbed into larger agribusiness Industry.

Oregon Story, “Harvesting the Wild” (Oregon Public Broadcasting, Portland, October 2, 2003).

This special program from Oregon Public Broadcasting discusses those involved in the Harvest of non-timber forest products: berries, mushrooms, moss, echinacea, and more. But as outsiders trespass into the Warm Springs Reservation in search of the surprisingly lucrative huckleberry, pushback from Native foragers start conversations about Stewardship and land loss. Who retains access to these natural resources? How are land boundaries navigated and negotiated? Those interviewed tackle these questions from a variety of perspectives, from local hobbyists to forest service workers.

Midday, “When Farmers Took a Holiday” (prod. Mark Heistad, Minnesota Public Radio, St. Paul, February 18, 1985).

This radio documentary looks back at the experiences of farmers during the early years of the Great Depression, with interviews from farmers and historians who look back on the Midwest populism of the Farmers’ Holiday Association movement. During that time, farmers Collectively withheld products and resources from the market—and sometimes resorted to violence and “hellraising”—in order to effect Policy changes. The broadcast incorporates a bit of art too, in the performance of Ernest V. Stoneman’s song from that time called “All I Got’s Gone”: “Whole lot of people own nice little farms. Doin’ pretty well, didn’t do no harm. Sold their farm, bought an auto or two. Now it’s come due, they had to skid-doo. All they got’s gone, all they got’s gone.”

Louisiana Public Square, “Louisiana Grown: Agriculture Across the State” (Louisiana Public Broadcasting, Baton Rouge, July 28, 2010).

This broadcast shows the continued discussion of “family farmer” ideal and Philosophy nearly four decades after The MacNeil/Lehrer Report broadcast (see above). How do farmers pass on their resources and land? Panelists on this local program discuss why young people haven’t been getting into farming. Justin DeKeyzer, a fourth-generation Louisiana farmer interviewed for the segment, suggests that land and high expenses are the primary factors: “Hard to get the land to farm, unless you own it, you know. A lot of people—this land gets passed down, or any land gets passed on to their kids, and most of them sell. And most of that is either sold too high a farmer can’t buy it, or it gets put to housing.”

Additional Broadcasts Related to "Land"

• Promise City (dir. John Beyer, Iowa Public Television, Johnston, October 14, 1969).
• This Land Is Your Land, “Dr. Teply” (WRVR, New York, March 31, 1971).
• This Land Is Your Land, episode 18, “Maurice Franz” (WRVR, New York, June 2, 1971).
• MPR News Feature, “Soundscape features sounds of the harvest on the norther plains” (Minnesota Public Radio, St. Paul, October 10, 1975). 
• “Interview with Farmers in the Miami Valley Area of Ohio” (WYSO, Yellow Springs, OH, ca. 1970s).
• “National Center for Audio Experimentation: Old MacDonald Sold His Farm” (Wisconsin Public Radio, ca. 1970s).
• New Jersey Nightly News, “Farms – Closer Look” (New Jersey Network, Trenton, ca. 1980).
• U.S. Chronicle, episode 223, “The Last Crop” (KQED-TV, San Francisco, CA, 1981).
• Stay on the Farm: Reflections of Three Generations, “Part 1” (Woodsmoke Productions, Vermont Public Radio, 1984).
• Legacies of the Land (dir. Ginny Martin, KERA, Dallas, TX, January 27, 1985).
• Journal, “Black Owned Land” (South Carolina ETV, Columbia, December 3, 1987).
• Midday, “A look at the differences between rural and urban Minnesota” (Minnesota Public Radio, St. Paul, March 27, 1990).
• North Carolina Now (UNC-TV, Research Triangle Park, NC, January 8, 1997).
• New Mexico in Focus, episode 625, “The Future of New Mexico: Crops, Cattle and Continuation” (KNME-TV, Albuquerque, NM, May 23, 2003). 
• Vado: The Unspoken History (prod. Thomas Williams, KRWG, Las Cruces, NM, March 2004).
• Aggie Almanac, episode 184, “Onions Without Borders” (KRWG, Las Cruces, NM, September 5, 2008).
• “The New Ruralism: Smart Growth and Local Food” (Commonwealth Club of California, San Francisco, May 20, 2010).
• Preserving Oklahoma History, episode 104 (OETA, Oklahoma City, 2011).
• Forsaken Fields (prod. Midori Sperandeo, KVIE, Sacramento, CA, October 27, 2017).
• “Farmer’s Market” (KUNM, Albuquerque, NM, August 17, 2019).
• PBS NewsHour, “Farming Gap” (NewsHour Productions, December 7, 2021).

Work

It’s ironic that those who till the soil, cultivate and harvest the fruits, vegetables, and other foods that fill your tables with abundance, have nothing left for themselves.

            —César Chávez, speaking on farm workers 14

What do we call someone who works the land? This deceptively simple question has myriad answers that illustrate the range of agricultural work: farmer, rancher, grower, farm worker, farm manager, processor, producer, and so on. But what do these categories reveal about the material realities of farm labor? Scholar Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern critiques the “agrarian myth” in her book The New American Farmer: Immigration, Race, and the Struggle for Sustainability. The myth can be traced back to early writers in the United States, including Thomas Jefferson, who described the farmer as the ideal model for a citizen of the republic: a mix of independence and dedication to their land that ultimately enhances social connection. This idealized agrarianism, Minkoff-Zern writes, “promotes the notion that in the United States, a country founded by hardworking individual farmers, land access has been democratically distributed” and that “all individuals who work the land diligently with their own hands (with no help from slave or hired labor) have access to upward agrarian mobility.” 15 But the economic and social barriers to farm ownership and Stewardship undermine this ideal, often at the cost of those most vulnerable to discrimination and disenfranchisement. 

Public broadcasting explores some of the nuances of farm work through stories from all of the categories listed above, from fishing processors in Alaska to prison-farm workers in New Jersey. This Anchor reflects on the economic and lived realities of agricultural work from a variety of perspectives. Here, the concept of “Work” invokes ideas of Harvest, Labor, and Movement, and the featured programs demonstrate how elements of race, gender, class, and culture relate to these concepts even as they complicate conventional assumptions about what it means to work the land.

Harvest represents both objects and actions: what is gathered together as well as the process of collection. Products can be harvested—corn, tobacco, freshwater mussels—but the phrase to harvest also denotes the labor that goes into the process. This section examines the diversity of farmed products across the nation, broadening our perspectives on what might be considered agriculture.

The Labor of the harvest is both physical and emotional. But not all labor has been visible to the public; often the representative American farmer has been pictured as a stoic, white, male figure toiling in his fields. But the public radio and television programs in this section offer different stories, from the collective actions of the United Farm Workers to the reflections of farm women enduring a harsh Wisconsin winter. These programs make visible the diverse experiences of working the land, highlighting underrepresented voices and sharing dimensions of labor that often go unacknowledged.

At first, we may think of agricultural work as fixed in place—in fields or barns or brooder houses, firmly rooted in the land—but farm labor is often about Movement: the movement of products, the movement of people. This section highlights the experiences of migration in farming, navigating borders between states and nations, and the challenges faced by those on the road to new fields.

Harvest

Workers feed alligators in a temperature-controlled farm building as featured in this episode of Louisiana Conservationist Magazine (1991).

“Just a Small Fishery” (KYUK, Bethel, AK, September 20, 1984).

This television program explores commercial and subsistence aquaculture in western Alaska. The fishery featured here represents the commercial interest in herring along the coastline. In the broadcast, fishing cooperative members discuss prices and the impacts of overfishing this aquatic Resource, locals follow the herring migration runs in their small fishing boats, and larger, Industrial processing vessels collect their hauls for sale on the market. The program expands definitions of agriculture, emphasizing that harvest can occur far from the dirt and soil of conventional farm land.

Louisiana Conservationist Magazine, episode 208, “Larto Saline Complex and Alligator Farming” (Louisiana Public Broadcasting, Baton Rouge, January 3, 1991).

One of the segments in this newsmagazine examines alligator farming: an industrial approach to raising gators for leather and meat production that began to gain traction in the 1970s. The journalists tour one of the facilities in 1990 where the animals were incubated and raised with carefully managed temperature chambers to control growth and development. By employing the Rhetoric of Industry—“conversion” to describe butchering, “food intake” to describe feeding, and “renewable Resource” to describe propagation—proponents of this approach frame alligator farming as an industry worth cultivating.

WPLN News Archive, “Tennessee Mussels” (WPLN/Nashville Public Radio, July 1, 2003).

This radio segment explores how pearls are farmed and produced through a careful process of implantation and culturing: materials (called “nuclei”) are deposited into the mollusks that are then left to develop into this luxury Resource over a series of years. Though cultured pearls are a global Industry, the ideal nuclei can be found in freshwater mussels from places like the Tennessee Freshwater Pearl Farm in Benton County: the spiny mussel, rough rabbitsfoot, purple wartyback, Cumberland monkeyface, birdwing pearlymussel. Tennessee pearl farmers are interviewed in this broadcast, discussing the harvesting process and the state’s significance within the global industry. As the narrator concludes, “Tennessee mussels are the heart of the world pearl market, making Tennessee the true mother of pearl.”

Notes on Milk (dir. Ariana Gerstein and Monteith McCollom, 2010).

This short documentary, broadcast on the PBS series POV, considers the Cultural and Political entanglements of a major agricultural Industry in the United States: dairy. From the breakfast table to the Watergate investigations, milk as a product and a symbol is powerfully connected to how the country is imagined and envisioned. With interviews from former and current dairy farmers, this artful program explores how consumers, producers, and product are entangled. 

Labor

Inmates of one of the New Jersey prison farms work and discuss their experiences in this feature on “Jones Farm” from the 1970s.

“Jones Farm” (New Jersey Network, Trenton, ca. 1970s).

In this news segment, journalists visit one of the fourteen prison farms in New Jersey in the 1970s, which supplied a significant percentage of the food for other prisons around the state. Those serving their sentences at Jones Farm worked with hogs and dairy cattle and received reduced sentences, though they saw very little monetary payment for what was very profitable labor, as outlined in the program. Difficult working conditions and cuts to work-release and furlough programs also take their toll. “Well, it’s nice for the visits,” says inmate Ken Carter of the prison farm. “You know, when your people come—your grandkids, your wife, friends—it’s nice, that’s all. Other than that, it’s just a work camp.”

Friends on the Road, “Three Farmers” (Wisconsin Public Television, WHA-TV, Madison, February 23, 1979).

This episode of the television series Friends on the Road visits three farmers in their homes. They discuss their daily chores while raising hogs and sheep, dealing with the realities of harsh Wisconsin winter Weather, and working as women in a male-dominated industry. “I believe that in the future you may see more women operating farms,” says Alice Carroll, “because after one or two have pioneered out and done it, there may be others that will follow and not feel out of place doing it.” The three featured farmers emphasize the amount of labor required in the industry but also the rewards that go along with good planning and recordkeeping. 

“What the Future Holds for Farm Workers and Hispanics” (Commonwealth Club of California, Hoover Institution Library & Archives, Stanford, CA, November 9, 1984).

This radio broadcast covers a meeting of the Commonwealth Club of California. At this meeting, César Chávez—a labor leader and civil rights activist—speaks to attendees about coordinating boycotts, the “savage conditions” under which farm workers must toil, his work through the United Farm Workers labor union, and Collective action in farming. “All my life I have been driven by one dream, one goal, one vision,” says Chávez, “to overthrow a farm labor system in this nation that treats farm workers as if they were not important human beings. Farm workers are not agricultural implements. They are not beasts of burden to be used and discarded.”

Crisis in Agriculture, “Farm Rally in Ames” (Iowa Public Television, Johnston, IA, February 27, 1985).

This is the second in a two-part series covering a 1985 rally in Ames, Iowa, where speakers discuss the devastating effects of the farm crisis on the physical and mental health of farmers. Joan Blundall is among those who share stories about farmer depression, violence, and suicide, broaching topics that do not often receive attention in political and economic discussions about agriculture. In a 2022 article from The Journal of Rural Health, researchers found that “other countries have discovered that farmers have higher rates of suicide than individuals in other occupations.” Australian researchers, for example, identified the Environmental impacts of climate change as potential stressors, while Indian studies identified “government apathy” as a contributing factor.16 The speakers featured in the program utilize impassioned Rhetorical appeals to push for Policy changes, demonstrating the emotional labor of farming that can go unacknowledged. 

Movement

Featured Item

Jose Ramirez Delgado reflects on how family’s his farming background impacted his experience in the 2006 program "Los Braceros: Strong Arms to Aid the USA” (item below).

NET Journal, episode 172, “What Harvest for the Reaper?” (dir. Morton Silverstein, National Educational Television and Radio Center, January 29, 1968).

Nearly ten years after Edward R. Murrow’s investigative coverage of migrant agricultural workers in Harvest of Shame (1960), this documentary from National Educational Television highlights the cruel and exploitative conditions of a farm labor camp in Long Island, as well as the vitriol and racism that Black workers faced from farm owners and processors. The program follows the laborers as they are bussed from Arkansas to New York to harvest strawberries, string beans, cauliflower, and potatoes under a Labor system deeply entrenched in the “economics of exploitation.”

The Oregon Story, “Agricultural Workers” (Oregon Public Broadcasting, July 12, 2001).

“Agriculture is very, very important to who we are as a country,” says Erasmo Gamboa, historian at the University of Washington. “Unfortunately, the public understands the importance of the farmer but not the farm worker.” Through commentary and interviews, this broadcast aims to center the stories of forgotten workers like Richard Salinas of Hubbard, Oregon, who began as a farm worker in Texas before moving with his family for the agricultural opportunities in the northwest. Ultimately, the broadcast considers how the migration of Latino farm workers has shaped the Cultural landscape of Oregon even as workers reflect on how communities in different states have reacted to their presence with varying degrees of prejudice and welcome.

“Hippie Jack and Friends” (WCTE, Cookeville, Tennessee, 2005)

This television program follows Jack and Lynne Stoddart as they recount their history in the Upper Cumberland region of Tennessee. The Stoddarts were a part of the Back to the Land countercultural movement of the 1970s and moved to the area from Miami, Florida. “It was a time when moving to the country, living off the land, and pursuing an alternate lifestyle was a reality,” says Jack. “It wasn’t something that people just dreamed about or, you know, thought about when they were tired.” The couple reflects on their experiences integrating into the neighborhood, the labor required after their move, and the locals who offered mentorship and knowledge about subsistence farming.

ViewFinder, “Los Braceros: Strong Arms to Aid the USA” (KVIE, Sacramento, CA, July 26, 2006).

This television documentary features interviews with workers who participated in the Bracero Program, a work agreement between the United States and Mexico that permitted laborers to migrate across the border to fulfill short-term labor contracts on farms, ranches, canneries, and railroads in the wake of a workforce shortage during World War II. Braceros were required to return to Mexico after their work permits expired, and the program lasted from 1942 to 1964. This documentary calls attention to the labor of the braceros, which has been downplayed in historical accounts of the period, as well as the discrimination and harsh living conditions they were subjected to. By focusing on individual braceros—interviewing them, giving them space to tell their Stories—this program seeks to emphasize the human dimension of this government Policy

Additional Broadcasts Relating to “Work”

• An Interview with Cesar Chavez (KPFA, Berkeley, CA, July 15, 1970)
• “Interview with Baldemar Velasquez” (WYSO, Yellow Springs, OH, May 19, 1973).
• MPR News Feature, “Farm Machinery May Replace Migrant Workers” (Minnesota Public Radio, St. Paul, MN, June 20, 1975).
• MacNeil/Lehrer Report, “Migrant Workers” (WNET and WETA, November 25, 1976).
• MacNeil/Lehrer Report, “Illinois Farmers Visit China” (WNET and WETA, April 21, 1978).
• Spectrum Hawaii, “Kauai” (KHET, Honolulu, HI, November 7, 1983).
• Kansas City Illustrated, “Newcomers” (KCPT, Kansas City, MO, June 19, 1984).
• Carolina Journal, “Farm Crisis” (South Carolina Educational Television Network, January 6, 1986).
• “Farm Worker Series” (KUNM, Albuquerque, NM, September 1, 1986).
• Midday, “Migrant Farm Workers” (Minnesota Public Radio, St. Paul, MN, October 17, 1988.)
• We Came to Grow: Japanese Americans in the Central Valley, 1869-1941 (KVIE, Sacramento, CA, 1999).
• Michigan at Risk, “Farming on the Edge” (WKAR, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, May 31, 2000).
• “The Farm Workers’ Movement” (Commonwealth Club of California, April 9, 2003).
• Return to the Valley (KEET, Eureka, CA, 2003).
• WPLN News Archive, “Tennessee Pearls” (WPLN News, Nashville, TN, June 30, 2003).
• Here and Now (Wisconsin Public Television, April 30, 2010).
• African Americans in California's Heartland (KVIE, Sacramento, CA, June 17, 2013).
• Viewfinder, “Little Manila: Filipinos in California’s Heartland" (KVIE, Sacramento, CA, June 17, 2013).

Environment

Much of the world’s best farmland is now threatened because our species lacks commitment to a spiritual and ethical vision of our interconnectedness with the land. Farmland is primary human habitat, and black winds, dark rivers are carrying it away. Our good health, the smiles on the faces of our grandchildren are being carried to places beyond our reach.

            —Soil and Survival: Land Stewardship and the Future of American Agriculture (1986) 17

The intimate connections between agriculture and the environment make sense at a glance, not only because the industry is firmly embedded in the natural world but also because of its scale. According to a 2012 report on land use from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, of the nearly 2.3 billion acres of national territory, 29 percent is used for grassland pasture and 17 percent for cropland, totaling 46 percent for these traditional industries alone. The impacts of agricultural choices about Land management—the use of pesticides, controlled burning for farm land, crop rotation, and topsoil depletion—have been a topic of conversation for both rural and urban dwellers as new technical and Industrial changes have developed over the last century. Public programming has responded to this conversation, unpacking the enduring (and sometimes fraught) connections between farming and nature.

But how does environmental impact vary by region? By state? What issues are centered in conversations about climate and the future? What ecological concepts gain symbolic and cultural resonance? The programs and Places featured in this anchor—from the cattle ranches of Wyoming to the hydroponic farms of Florida—tackle these questions and more by focusing on ideas of Crisis, Soil, and Weather.

Crisis is a concept often writ large in broadcast coverage of agricultural news. Disasters, extreme weather, dwindling Resources—it’s not difficult to see how these forces shape how we talk about farming. Some crises are framed as acts of God, from volcanic eruptions to sudden and devastating droughts. But some are acknowledged as man-made. The AAPB collection includes reports on the effects of air pollution and contamination on agricultural industry and practice. As scientists have reported for decades, climate change may lead to further crises on the farm: severe droughts and floods impacting production, carbon dioxide levels disturbing plant growth, and the growth of pests affecting both plants and livestock.18

Perhaps one of the most significant agricultural crises of the twentieth century—the Dust Bowl of the 1930s—has been discussed as both a weather and man-made disaster. But at its heart, it was an issue of Soil: a component of agriculture that is rich with symbolic and practical significance. In this section, the programs demonstrate how farmers and agriculturalists talk about soil conditions and conservation, often with a sustainable future in mind.

Those who work in farming, regardless of their location, know of the importance of paying attention to the Weather. Whether it’s a years-long drought or a seemingly light rain shower, the effects of changing weather conditions and patterns can have significant effects on day-to-day work. The programs featured in this section explore not only atmospheric conditions but also the seasonal rhythms of farm work.

Crisis

Farmers and scientists speculate about the next volcanic eruption in the Pacific Northwest in A Year of Ash: Mount St. Helen’s Impact on Agriculture (1981).

Hold Your Breath, “Agricultural Problems Caused by Air Pollution” (Michigan State University WKAR, East Lansing, October 9, 1963).

“Just hold your breath,” the narrator begins in this radio series. “Hold your breath as long as you can, and you’ll soon discover how vital this natural Resource is.” This particular episode considers the agricultural and economic costs of air pollution. The 1963 program is a part of Hold Your Breath, a series from Michigan State University that was devoted to discussions of the dangers of air pollution, which anticipated the major amendments to the Clean Air Act in 1970. As national concern about air quality heightened, local stations explored the multifaceted nature of this crisis. Here, for example, we learn more about how irradiated hydrocarbons (produced from vehicle exhaust) impact the Land, Harvest, and Soil conditions from a county supervisor from Orange County, California.

The MacNeil/Lehrer Report, “Forgotten Farms” (WNET/WETA, New York/Washington, April 10, 1980).

Not all environmental crises are natural. This episode of The MacNeil/Lehrer Reportcovers the 1973 contamination of cattle feed in Michigan, which resulted in human ingestion of polybrominated biphenyls (PBBs) through the consumption of meat and dairy products, causing a statewide health crisis. The crisis and coverage demonstrate how rural, agricultural issues can have devastating impacts on Places beyond the farm through interconnected food networks.

A Year of Ash: Mount St. Helen's Impact on Agriculture (prod. Alison Hansel, Northwest Public Television, 1981).

This documentary explores how farmers, feed lot managers, and scientists responded in the wake of Mount St. Helen’s eruption in 1980. With the significant ash fall and changes to the mineral composition of the soil, concern rose from scientists and farmers about high-acidity dust, starving livestock, contaminated crops, and rusting equipment. Though some effects were mild, the discussion around the aftermath demonstrates how those working in the agricultural sector mitigate risk and attempt to anticipate future crises. As the narrator concludes, “There is no ending to this story. As long as the Cascade Mountains from Washington to northern California are dormant but not dead, the chance for another eruption is there.”

New Mexico in Focus, episode 323, “Gray Wolf Reintroduction” (KNME-TV, Albuquerque, NM, March 17, 2000).

Agricultural work is not only about responding to the aftereffects of disasters or crises; oftentimes it’s about anticipating them. This program considers the controversy surrounding the reintroduction of the Mexican gray wolf population into New Mexico. Environmentalists were eager to reintroduce this indigenous at-risk species and restore the natural ecosystem of the area, but local ranchers pushed back vehemently out of concerns about potential violence against livestock and families. Here, differing environmental priorities were debated between conservationists and cattle growers as they heatedly discussed wolf recovery and agriculture.

Soil

Featured Item

The host in this 1954 Science in Sight program discusses the erosion of farmland and the “good principles” of farming. Science in Sight, "Saving the Soil" (KETC-TV, 1954) (item below).

Science in Sight, “Saving the Soil” (KETC-TV, St. Louis, MO, 1954)

This early broadcast features a conversation between the series host, Bob Lemen, and a farmer from Eureka, Missouri, who promotes different farming Practices and principles that support soil conservation. Lemen has incorporated a terrace system on his farm near the waters of the Mississippi River, and through contour plowing he’s able to mitigate the loss of precious, rich topsoil. The program also includes demonstrations of runoff and erosion processes that likely appealed to a Youth audience.

Illustrated Daily, episode 5100, “Soil Conservation” (KNME-TV, Albuquerque, NM, March 21, 1985)

The environmental, cultural, and psychological impacts of the Dust Bowl Crisis gave rise to the soil conservation movement in the U.S. This program looks back on the formation and legacy of the Soil Conservation Service, specifically focusing on the state of New Mexico and its geographic history. Extension agents and government representatives discuss desertification (the formation of deserts), the state’s susceptibility to future soil crises, and what can be done to intervene.

Our Kansas Heritage (High Plains Public Radio, Garden City, KS, date unknown).

This broadcast tells the history of Kansas, called by some “the great American desert.” The host of Our Kansas Heritage, Leo Oliva, recounts the impact of cultivation and different agricultural Methods on the dichotomous character the state has taken on over time: “These were all reactions to the land which is now Kansas, and the controversy continues. Kansas is a desert. Kansas is a garden. Both images continue as themes in our history, literature, and folklore.” The broadcast also connects with cultural issues such as Storytelling and Placemaking practices, stories of Movement and migration, and broader questions about environmental legacies.

Weather

The hydroponic farm featured in Florida Matters helps locals deal with the ongoing drought conditions in 2009.

One More Harvest (PBS Utah, Salt Lake City, 1984).

This documentary follows Montana farmer Melvin Good during Harvest season as he cautiously watches the weather. Along with showing day-to-day tasks, the program situates the work of farming within networks of family, community, Culture, and Labor. Good practices an older approach to farming, and the narrator lingers on the idealized image of the farmer on his Land: “His tall, lanky frame strides about this Montana prairie with ease and comfort. You get a sense that he belongs here almost as much as the wheat does.” This iconic imagery and Rhetoric amplify a romantic conception of agrarian life.

Main Street, Wyoming, “A Wyoming Ranch Family” (Wyoming PBS, Riverton, November 22, 1994).

As we follow the Hampton family during their day-to-day work on the ranch in the Big Horn Mountains of Wyoming, we see the impact of unexpected rain on cattle-market day and what support networks the family draws upon when the weather is against them. “We don’t battle with Mother Nature,” says Sam Hampton of Mahogany Butte Ranch. “We just try to get along with her.”

Florida Matters, episode 11, “Drought” (WUSF, Tampa, FL, May 1, 2009).

This news program considers how farmers, gardeners, and civilians responded to the three-year drought that the state experienced during this time. From a visit to a desalination plant to conversations with hydroponic farmers, broadcasters explore alternatives to traditional farming in light of the water Crisis. “We don't feel that we're adversely affected by the drought,” says Cathy Hume, co-owner of the hydroponic farm Urban Oasis. “I think we thought well enough in advance. This is the type of system that I think more farmers need to consider and look forward to in order to continue to conserve the water that is becoming less and less abundant for us.” 

Additional Broadcasts Relating to “Environment”

• The Naturalists, “John Burroughs” (KRMA-TV, Denver, CO, March 11, 1973).
• “Pesticides, Prices and Boycotts: An Urban View of Agriculture” (Commonwealth Club of California, April 27, 1973).
• MPR News Feature, “Wet Weather Delays Grain Planting in Areas of Minnesota” (Minnesota Public Radio, St. Paul, MN, June 10, 1974).
• MPR News Feature, “Blizzard of the Century Aftermath in Rural Minnesota Livestock Farms” (Minnesota Public Radio, St. Paul, MN, January 21, 1975).
• MPR News Feature, “Low Minnesota Grain Crop Means Tragedy for Farmers” (Minnesota Public Radio, St. Paul, MN, ca. 1975).
• MPR News Feature, “Record High Grain Crops in Midwest but Not Minnesota” (Minnesota Public Radio, St. Paul, MN, ca. 1975).
• The MacNeil/Lehrer Report, “Grain Glut” (Educational Broadcasting Corporation and GWETA, July 27, 1977).
• The MacNeil/Lehrer Report, “Harvest Woes” (Educational Broadcasting Corporation and GWETA, October 5, 1982).
• Louisiana: The State We’re In (Louisiana Public Broadcasting, Baton Rouge, LA, November 22, 1985).
• Carolina Journal, “Interview with Tom Trantham – S. C. Dairy Farmer” (South Carolina ETV, Columbia, SC, January 28, 1987).
• American Experience, Surviving the Dust Bowl, footage (WGBH, Boston, MA, August 12, 1996).
• Journey to Planet Earth, “After School Activity” (South Carolina ETV, Columbia, SC, February 19, 1999).
• The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, “Salmon Scare” (MacNeil/Lehrer Productions, Oregon Public Broadcasting, January 26, 2004).
• “Securing Our Future: From Farm to Fuel” (South Carolina ETV, Columbia, SC, February 28, 2007).
• Growing on the High Plains, “Great Gardens” (High Plains Public Radio, Garden City, KS, 2009).
• BirdNote, “Wild Farm Alliance” (BirdNote, Seattle, WA, August 12, 2020).
• Teachers’ Domain, “Alaska Native Perspectives on Earth and Climate; Engaging Alaska Natives in the Geosciences 2008; A Subsistence Culture Impacted by Climate Change” (WGBH, Boston, no date).
• Teachers’ Domain, “Can Organic Farms and Mosquito Control Coexist?” (WGBH, Boston, no date).

Culture

Among the first things one learns from the practice of agriculture, whether one comes to it by birthright—raised in the country—or transplanted from the city, is that farming is not a mere mechanical, scientific, or even economic enterprise, but a social and thus cultural one.

            —Thomas F. Pawlick, journalist 19

Here, we take in the cultural dimensions of agriculture: the art, the stories, and the social events that shape and are shaped by the occupational practices of farming. More than a science, more than an Industry, agriculture is deeply embedded in social life and historical memory. But there is no singular expression of agrarian culture in the United States. By exploring some of the Stories, Folklife, and Youth activities showcased in public broadcasting throughout the decades, this Anchor invites you to consider how diverse stories can connect through shared issues of education, finance, opportunity, and remembrance.

Stories play an intimate role in constructing and remembering the past. Stories about agriculture, specifically, can reflect shifting environmental concerns, philosophies of land stewardship, and perceptions of history. But in telling stories of the country’s agricultural past, we must contend with issues of slavery, land loss, and the immigrant experience. What do we prioritize in our storytelling? What do we gloss over? In this section, the featured programs examine how storytelling on the farm reflects certain mindsets about the past.

“Folklife is community life and values, artfully expressed in myriad forms and interactions,” writes folklorist Mary Hufford. “Universal, diverse, and enduring, it enriches the nation and makes us a commonwealth of cultures.”20 In the United States, agricultural folklife is often expressed vividly through festival: state and county fairs, food-themed cooking events, seasonal harvest shows. The programs in this section come from a variety of regions across the country, but many of them highlight the financial stakes of these events, demonstrating not only their cultural significance but also their ties to tourism and local economies. 

Many folklife and festival events are geared towards the younger generation, sharing knowledge through engaging cultural experiences. The Youth section of this exhibit explores both programming for and about youth involvement in agriculture. Organizations such as 4-H clubs and Future Farmers of America (FFA) articulate their vested interest in providing for farming futures, but the realities of farm work aren’t always centered in broader conversations about youth education and development. What does opportunity mean for those families working on farms? What resources are available, and what activities are prioritized?

Story

Featured Item

One of the hosts of “The Long Shadow of the Plantation” (2019) radio broadcast speaks with farmer Shirley Sherrod about how the history of slavery continues to impact contemporary agricultural realities. BackStory, "The Long Shadow of the Plantation: How a Weighted Past Creates a Complicated Present" (September 20, 2019) (item below).

Assignment Iowa Classics, episode 301, “Living History Farms” (Iowa Public Television, Johnston, IA, July 7, 1977).

This television episode illustrates how a Place can be constructed to express a particular vision of the past. While visiting the 500-acre farm museum in Clive, Iowa, attendees can witness multiple periods of agricultural history through a pioneer subsistence farm and a 1900s horse farm on the same property. Workers use old-fashioned equipment, machinery, and Methods to work the Land and provide for themselves. Those involved in the project say they’re telling the authentic story of Iowa’s past, but scholars would argue that it is an interpretation of the past, centering an agrarian lifestyle with a strictly gendered division of labor. In Destination Culture: Tourism, Museums, and Heritage, folklorist Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett discusses how such “heritage productions,” in asserting an all-encompassing vision of the past, can potentially “subsume prior and subsequent historical sites” and obscure the variety of historical experiences.21

Farm Day (Maryland Public Television, Owings Mills, February 3, 1986).

While the content of this particular episode tackles issues relating to Policy and Industry, Farm Day as a television series provides us with an example of twentieth-century broadcasting that was dedicated exclusively to sharing farm stories and news. Journalism scholars have noted the decline of agricultural reporting towards the end of the century, primarily in print media outlets.22 But Farm Day shows what agricultural coverage often looked like during the heat of the 1980s farm crisis. This series was transmitted nationally through a network of public broadcasting stations—as illustrated in the special shout-out to WOSU viewers in Columbus, Ohio, at the close of this program—and was partially funded by the Farm Credit System, “the nation’s borrower-owned banks and associations that provide credit and related services to American agriculture.”

Hit the Dirt, “Native Seed Search” (WERU Community Radio, East Orland, ME, date unknown).

Stories can be shared throughout a variety of mediums—even botanical, as exemplified in this short radio coverage of the Native Seed Search, a nonprofit seed conservation organization in Tucson, Arizona. Groups like Native Seed Search typically collect, preserve, and distribute at-risk seeds during times of Crisis through the publication of a catalog, but this group has an additional mission. “While the group is a seed conservation organization,” says the radio host, “they realize that in order for crops to be preserved, the cultural context in which they have been maintained has to be preserved as well.” Along with their conservation mission, Native Seed Search also offers their resources to Native American groups who wish to cultivate their own traditional crops. In this way, seeds can serve as a connection point as stories and knowledge from the past are shared in the present.

“The Long Shadow of the Plantation: How a Weighted Past Creates a Complicated Present” (BackStory, September 20, 2019).

This radio broadcast from 2019 brings together three historians and their special guests to host a discussion about the legacies and impact of Land that is intimately connected to slavery: plantations. The first segment tells the story of Shirley Sherrod of New Communities in Albany, Georgia: the struggle to acquire farmland, the discrimination lawsuit against the USDA, reclaiming an old plantation space, and reckoning with past historical violence and trauma through agricultural Work and Stewardship. The second part critically evaluates how modern plantation museums historicize and tell stories of the past: what is centered, what is minimized, and the stakes of historical representation. There are over 300 plantation museums in the US, and this broadcast makes compelling points about how issues of history, heritage, and Placemaking are also issues of social justice.

Folklife

A sorority sells peaches at the 1996 Ruston Peach Festival in Taste of Louisiana with Chef John Folse (item below).

Grass Roots Journal, episode 406, “Onion Festival” (Northwest Public Television, Pullman, WA, 1983).

The segment from this television magazine covering the Walla Walla Sweet Onion Festival in Washington State demonstrates how festivals and events relating to agriculture can take on special meaning within tourism economies and Placemakingpractices. “We’re trying to attract people to come in to Walla Walla,” says commission president Wes Colley. “To think of us as the Sweet Onion City, and quit thinking of us as the place where the state prison’s at, which we think’s a negative. And so we think it has a lot of public relations for the town.” The cultural and economic value of the sweet onion is shown here as festival attendees gather to cook, judge, and eat the dishes: salads, onion rings, even onion pie.

North Carolina Now (UNC-TV, Research Triangle Park, NC, October 16, 1995).

This live news coverage of the 128th North Carolina State Fair in 1995 explores what goes into this festival: the planning, setup, and events of the day—like pig races and other Youth activities. But the special segments in this program highlight the significant changes in agricultural Industry and Practice that were happening at the time. “For centuries, farming has been the lifeblood of our state, and the family farm was at the heart and the soul of North Carolina,” says newscaster Marita Matray. “But even as the state fair honors the family farmer, there are fewer and fewer family farms left.” The interviews with farmers featured in this coverage concern issues of Stewardship, Harvest, and Crisis even as they share their Stories of small-farm living.

Taste of Louisiana with Chef John Folse & Company: Fairs & Festivals of Louisiana, “Peach Festival” (Louisiana Public Broadcasting, Baton Rouge, March 9, 1996).

John Folse’s series on the foodways and festivals of Louisiana revisits a number of local products that are important to the state, both economically and socially. In his coverage of the Peach Festival in Ruston, Louisiana, Folse goes into detail about how the peaches are cultivated, Harvested, processed, and cooked for competitions, emphasizing the intimate connections between cooking, culture, and agricultural work. The majority of the program features cooking demonstrations by Folse, who utilizes the special product of the day, but the opening stories of fairs and food illustrate the cultural context of the produce.

Minding Your Business, episode 391, “Whole Enchilada Festival” (KRWG, Las Cruces, New Mexico, October 3, 2008).

This series examines the economic and natural Resources of southwest New Mexico. The festival began as Vaquero Days, run by the Las Cruces Chamber of Commerce, but it evolved to “The Whole Enchilada” festival in 1980 after the event showcased the Guinness World Record-holding enchilada that was made with produce that was locally significant. “I think it’s a very prided culture,” says Fiesta Board Vice-President Gary Perez, “showing the traditions, the flavor of the food in the southwest, and certainly celebrating one of our biggest cash crops in the state: the green chile. And of course, we all know that we have the best of it down here in the state.”

Youth

The young host of Gumbo Island visits a livestock show in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Dr. Dad’s PH3, “Soil and Agriculture” (Louisiana Public Broadcasting, Baton Rouge, 1995).

This broadcast from Louisiana Public Broadcasting was a part of Dr. Dad’s PH3: an educational series that introduced young audiences to scientific and historical concepts. This episode tackles Soil composition through hands-on activities, demonstrations, and trips to important Places relating to farming. Here, Dr. Dad visits both a small-scale herb farmer as well as the McIlhenny Company’s commercial farm, showcasing very different agricultural Practices with different conservation philosophies.

“Wisconsin Farm Kids” (PBS Wisconsin, WHA-TV, Madison, 1999).

“This is the 90s,” says Wisconsin teen Haley in this 1999 special program on youth and agriculture. “And we’re not hicks and, like, old-time farmers. We’re very modern—we have all kinds of equipment, tractors.” The teens interviewed in this program address conceptions and misconceptions they’ve encountered while working on their family farms, while the agricultural reporter asks questions about day-to-day life and chores, special Folklife events, farm prices and loans, urban development, and the futures they imagine in agriculture, both personally and for their state. As the teens discuss changing attitudes about farming, they share stories of early mornings, missing school events, visits to loan offices, and travel to Rhetorically signal that they are hard-working, economically savvy, mobile, and conscientious.

Gumbo Island, “Farm Families” (Louisiana Public Broadcasting, Baton Rouge, 1997).

This educational television series explores the cultures and histories of Louisiana, geared towards children from kindergarten through fourth grade. In this episode, the young host visits the Louisiana State University youth livestock show in Baton Rouge and speaks with 4-H and Future Farmers of America (FFA) members about their work, competitions, and growing up on farms. Jeremy Martin, one of the teens followed in the program, participates in a sheep-showing competition in hopes of winning a satin ribbon or plated belt buckle.

Louisiana: The State We're In, episode 431 (Louisiana Public Broadcasting, Baton Rouge, August 15, 1980).

The first segment of this television news program considers the migrant education program in Evangeline Parish in Louisiana, which was designed to serve the children of farm workers in the state whose lives are often on the Move according to the seasonal work available at the time. Around 9,000 children participated in the federally funded programs across the state while their parents worked in the fields and on crawfish farms in the area. The news coverage demonstrates the need for programs and funding to support those most vulnerable who may be constrained by systems of scarcity, need, and subjugation.

Additional Broadcasts Relating to “Culture”

• Jolie Louisiane, “Travail a la Ferme” (Louisiana Public Broadcasting, Baton Rouge, 1975).
• VPR Forum, “Documentary on the failure of small ‘Hill Farms’ in Vermont” (prod. Kate Stiasni, Vermont Public Radio, Colchester, February 14, 1978).
• Growing Place, episode 546 (KANZ-FM, High Plains Public Radio, Garden City, KS, ca. 1970s).
• “Country Life: Stories and Recollections of 94 Year Old Earl Gregg from West Jefferson, Ohio” (WYSO, Yellow Springs, OH, June 2, 1981).
• Venture, “Ropers Mountain” (South Carolina Educational Network, Columbia, April 17, 1986).
• Journal, “Animals at the Fair” (South Carolina Educational Television Network, Columbia, October 21, 1987).
• Robert Frost, “In the Country of Milk and Sugar” (New Hampshire Public Television, Durham, January 9, 1991).
• Hit the Dirt, “Sing to the Crops” (WERU Community Radio, East Orland, ME, March 19, 1992).
• North Carolina Now (UNC-TV, Research Triangle Park, NC, October 19, 1995).
• A Taste of Louisiana with Chef John Folse & Company: Fairs & Festivals of Louisisana, “Rice Festival” (Louisiana Public Broadcasting, Baton Rouge, June 22, 1996).
• “The Farmer’s Wife” (PBS Wisconsin, Madison, September 28, 1998).
• Oregon Story, “Farming” (Oregon Public Broadcasting, Portland, March 30, 1999).
• The Alabama Experience, “The Story of Faunsdale Plantation” (prod. Wendy Reed Bruce, University of Alabama Center for Public Television and Radio, April 20, 2000). 
• 4-H National Conversation, raw footage (Connecticut Public Broadcasting Network, Hartford, March 1, 2002).
• Ag Basics 101, “Compilation 2” (High Plains Public Radio, Garden City, KS, ca. 2002).
• ¡Colores!, episode 1926, “Painter Eli Levin, ‘Art Farm,’ Playwright Terrance McNally, Child Prodigy Rachel Barton” (KNME-TV, Albuquerque, NM, July 26, 2013).
• Learning Across Kansas, episode 105, “Middle School” (KPTS Channel 8, Wichita, KS, 2020).

Practice

In the daily lives of farmers, the act of calling someone a "good farmer" is an acknowledgement of appreciation and status within the community. It is not a title given lightly. Rather it bestows on the individual recognition of the cultural competences that make a farmer worthy of being sought out by others for assistance – knowledge, skills, or material assistance – the provision of which, in turn, forms bonds of mutual obligation within farming communities. It is the centre of the farming culture.

            —The Good Farmer: Culture and Identity in Food and Agriculture (2022)23

How do we judge agricultural practice? What is “good farming”? What issues do we prioritize? Environmentalism? Productivity and food access? Oftentimes there is tension between industrial approaches and sustainable practices. Agricultural ethics offers some insight into how different stakeholders tackle these questions. This field is concerned with issues relating to the cultivation, production, and distribution of farmed goods and products, as discussed in philosopher Ronald Sandler’s work, “Virtue Theory, Food, and Agriculture.” “In agricultural ethics,” writes Sandler, “it is often claimed that farming promotes good character traits – e.g., self-reliance, fortitude, and patriotism – and that virtues such as diligence, ecological sensitivity, and patience are central to good agricultural practice.” 24

“Practice” ties together many of the other anchors in this exhibit: the Environmental impacts of specific farming methods, the personal philosophies that inform ideas about Land and Political action, the influence of industry on agricultural Work and farming Cultures. Many of the programs in this anchor explore alternatives to large-scale agriculture through sustainable and organic practices, while others illuminate different industries and models of farming that develop in response to environmental and social conditions. Through the concepts of Industry, Method, and Philosophy, this section demonstrates the varied practices involved in agriculture—and how agriculture as a practice is connected to larger ethical considerations.

The radio and television broadcasts under Industry highlight ongoing interests in and concerns about the modernization of agriculture. From discussions of aquacultural developments to debates concerning corporate agribusiness, the featured items demonstrate a diverse range of agricultural practices, many of which have developed out of mindsets formed in the early twentieth century.25

Debates about industry ultimately lead to debates about Method: how should farming be practiced on the ground? The broadcasts featured in this section reflect how public media, its audiences, and those involved in farm work have reacted over the past half century to new technological and scientific developments, exploring early organic farms as well as following a community shifting from subsistence to market agriculture. 

Agricultural practice is informed by Philosophy; ethical and value-driven decisions have considerably impacted how farming has evolved as an industry. The programs in this section consider a range of farming philosophies, from stewardship practices driven by a deep sense of community and tradition to ecologically conscious valuations of local resources. Philosophy also connects to the small family farm: a model often featured at the heart of agricultural debate as this way of life continues to diminish in the rural landscape.

Industry

A 1972 episode of The Advocates shows images and video from a large factory farm before convening a debate on the place of large corporations in agriculture.

The Advocates, episode 98, “Should large corporations be driven out of farming?”(WGBH, Boston, MA, March 28, 1972).

The Advocates was a public affairs television show that featured a modified debate format: a question would be argued from two sides, with advocates and witnesses testifying in favor of or against a proposal, and the viewing audience would submit their votes on the decision. This episode covers the issue of corporate agribusiness, which was fast becoming one of the dominant forces in the agricultural sector as family farmers were leaving their farms by choice or by force. “Large financial conglomerates are farming rural America for a harvest of dollars,” argues advocate Howard Miller,” “and leaving behind them enormous human costs which we all pay for.” The opposition, led by William Rusher, contends that pushing corporations out of farming would “turn back the clock of American agriculture fifty years.” In the debate that follows, senators, watchdogs, farmers, economists, and professors debate the very nature of agriculture: Should we prioritize human capital or economic productivity?

Montana Medicine Show, “Thomas Campbell” (KGLT, Bozeman, Montana, date unknown).

This brief radio broadcast tells the story of Thomas Campbell, “the Wheat King of America,” who was one of the leading proponents of large-scale industrial agriculture in the early twentieth century—quoting Campbell: “Mechanization is the farmer’s answer to the Weather.” Through Campbell’s story—developing the world’s largest wheat farm in Hardin, Montana; leasing arid land on the Crow Reservation for development; advising agriculturalists in Russia, England, and France—and through his own words, the program demonstrates the Rhetorical appeals of industrial agriculture, invoking the ideals of efficiency, scale, and abundance. Critics, however, would note that “Campbell single-handedly killed the family farm,” according to the broadcast, forever impacting the small-scale Philosophy.

Focus 580, “Aquaculture” (WILL Illinois Public Media, Urbana, May 15, 2001). The topic of this Champaign, Illinois, call-in radio program, the aquaculture industry or "fish farming," might not often come to mind when thinking about examples of agriculture. Host David Inge speaks with biologist Dr. Rebecca Goldberg about different aquaculture systems—tank-raised fish housed in barns, net pens in marine coastal waters, catfish ponds in the southeast, oyster beds in the Long Island Sound—emphasizing the diverse practices, species, and environments that make up aquaculture. They also discuss the Environmental conditions affecting the industry, from the world-wide depletion of wild fish stocks to animal waste and oceanic pollution.

“Marijuana Economics: The Pros and Cons of California’s Cash Crop” (Commonwealth Club of California, Hoover Institution Library & Archives, July 30, 2009).

This radio broadcast is a record of a 2009 meeting of Inforum, a division of the Commonwealth Club of California that hosts events and discussions for people in their 20s and 30s. This panel presentation and Q&A focused on the issue of the marijuana industry—specifically highlighting the “fiscal aspects” of the crop rather than moral or ethical questions about marijuana use. Panelists include a local police chief, psychiatrist, and a civil liberties organizer who frame their Rhetorical debate around a discussion of cost standpoints, potential lawsuits, and tax revenues.

Method

Panelists take calls from Iowa farms requesting information on sustainable agriculture in this Alternatives in Agriculture Call-In broadcast (1989).

“Bush Farming - An Alternative” (KYUK, Bethel, AK, date unknown).

This special program examines alternative farming methods in communities around Aniak, Alaska. Known as an area with especially rich Soil, the farmland along the river is the site of many projects promoted by the Kuskokwim Native Association (KNA). Lowell Lambert, a KNA project director, discusses some of those upcoming plans: hog rearing, solar greenhouses, dairying, climate-controlled potato and seed storage, and more. With dwindling game and other Resources in the area, local communities struggled to support themselves through subsistence hunting and farming methods. The KNA ultimately promotes new farming practices as a means of supporting local markets and access to food.

MPR News Feature, “Minnesota Organic Farmer Gives a Tour of His Fields” (Minnesota Public Radio, St. Paul, October 2, 1975).

This radio program follows Earl Cunningham as he leads journalists, an agricultural economist, and a citizen member of a pesticide task force on a tour of his property to highlight the natural farming methods he’s incorporated over the years: crop rotation, the application of mineral-based Soil conditioner, and more. Cunningham discusses how these methods have become a part of his personal Philosophy, using particularly evocative language and religious Rhetoric to emphasize his belief in the need for organic, natural farming methods and his deep concern about a potential Crisis involving chemical agriculture: “You can’t worship the Creator on Sunday and go out and prostitute His soil on Monday.”

Alternatives in Agriculture Call-In (Iowa Public Television, Johnston, March 3, 1989).

In this television broadcast, viewers from around Iowa call in to a live panel with questions for agriculturalists, rural program directors, organic farmers, organizers, and Soil scientists. The program includes conversations about potential drought responses and Weather conditions, weed management, orchard maintenance, and more. Ultimately, the host asserts that sustainable alternatives should be thought about as “improving the bottom line,” using the Rhetoric of Industry to make a case for why alternative methods actually are more viable than chemical treatments and pesticides. 

“GMO: Label or Not?” (Commonwealth Club of California, Hoover Institution Library & Archives, Stanford, CA, October 25, 2012).

“Until we have more resolution there, it’s the least we can do—is to give people the right to know, let them look at a label.” So says Ken Cook, director of the Environmental Working Group out of Washington, D.C. Cook was one of four panelists discussing California Proposition 37, which would require food to carry a label if it included genetically altered products. Cook’s argument is that, since the long-term impact of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) hasn’t been tested, consumer awareness is an important step in food production. Opponents of the proposition argued that labels would lead to increased food prices, cause undo public confusion given a lack of scientific evidence of harm, and aren’t necessary since the products have been reviewed by the Food and Drug Administration. Ultimately, the panelists consider the broader question: What are the Environmental consequences of the cultivation and Harvest of genetically modified products?

Philosophy

Featured Item

Residents of San Juan Pueblo, New Mexico, discuss their agricultural philosophy and connections to tradition in this radio broadcast from KUNM-Albuquerque. "San Juan Pueblo - Rio Grande Famers Version" (KUNM, 1994) (item below).

Local Issue, “Death of a Small Farm” (KUON-TV, Lincoln, Nebraska, National Educational Television, September 10, 1967).

As far back as the mid-twentieth century, media broadcasts have speculated about the fate of the family farm. More than a model of agriculture, the family farm is a lifestyle often tied to philosophical ideas of Stewardship, self-sufficiency, and a locally-focused perspective. The 1967 broadcast out of Lincoln, Nebraska, adds to that Rhetoric, calling the family farm an “institution,” the “King of American Agriculture,” and connecting it to the social and economic health of rural communities. Reporter R. Neale Copple focuses on the shift towards larger, consolidated, and specialized farming while lamenting the Movement of workers from farms to cities. Later broadcasts in this collection explore how family farms became subsumed by larger agribusiness and corporate farming, but the “uprooting” and “exodus” of the Youth (to use the Rhetoric of this broadcast) seems to be one of the prime anxieties at this stage in the industry’s history. Copple ends on a note of optimism: just as the “shiny, powerful tractor” replaced the horse, so, too, will the old style of farming be replaced by a more productive, prosperous model, confirming an Industrial mindset even as he mourns the decline of the family farm.

“San Juan Pueblo – Rio Grande Farmers Version” (KUNM, Albuquerque, New Mexico, ca. 1994).

This radio broadcast considers the Methods and philosophy of farmers living in the San Juan Pueblo of New Mexico as they navigate the balance between traditional agricultural practice and new Methods and technology. The San Juan Agricultural Cooperative, formed in part to support tribal income, has incorporated new technology such as a solar dryer and dehydrator in their green chili production, while others in the community have sought to preserve old melon seeds: heirlooms that had been passed down through generations. “We look back at the old ways and say: What was it that we used to do that built a lot of the harmony and the value system what our tribe was based on?“ says Joe Garcia, governor of the Pueblo. “So we looked back and said farming was one of them. And that’s the down-to-earth thing—we’re working our hands; we’re forming communal groups.”

Tobacco Blues (dir. Christine Fugate, Café Sisters Productions and KET, 1997).

More than a program on the tobacco Industry, this documentary, which was broadcast on the PBS series POV, is an exploration of the lives of Kentucky tobacco farmers as issues of public health, financial stability, morality, family tradition, and Politics collide. It underscores the differences between corporate tobacco and the farmers who are often the ones to feel the unequal economic impact of regulation. But behind these conversations is the shifting social perception of smoking as well as the broader question: Who is ethically implicated in the cultivation of potentially harmful substances? 

Florida Matters, episode 3, “Going Green in Florida” (WUSF, Tampa, FL, February 13, 2009).

The first segment of this episode explores urban approaches to sustainability through small-scale agriculture. Here, sustainability is tied to a local philosophy: relying on food and other Resources that are close to home in order to minimize global shipping and transport emissions. Jim Kovaleski lives in the suburbs of New Port Richey, Florida, and has transformed his yard into productive farmland, albeit on a smaller scale. In his interview for the program, Kovaleski couches his project as “farming” rather than just gardening, expanding ideas about Land use and sustainability while exploring new applications of permaculture, natural pesticides, and local foraging and Harvest in unexpected Places.

Additional Broadcasts Relating to “Practice”

• Wisconsin on the Move, “How Now Cow” (Wisconsin Public Radio, Madison, June 30, 1966).
• MPR News Feature, “Organic farming promoted” (Minnesota Public Radio, St. Paul, November 22, 1974).
• MPR News Feature, “Sleepy Eye farmer advocates for organic practices” (Minnesota Public Radio, St. Paul, October 1, 1975).
• En Francais, “Sugar Cane Farming in Louisiana (1981)” (Louisiana Public Broadcasting, Baton Rouge, December 20, 1981).
• Talk of Alaska (KAKM Alaska Public Media, Anchorage, October 30, 1984).
• Midday, “Blessings of the Field” (Minnesota Public Radio, St. Paul, November 28, 1985).
• “Farm Families in Transition” (Iowa Public Television, Johnston, December 4, 1986).
• The Wisconsin Magazine, episode 1522, “It Pays to Grow Corn” (Wisconsin Public Television, Madison, March 29, 1989).
• Emphasis, “Sustainable Agriculture: Growing Awareness” (WSIU, Carbondale, IL, November 17, 1992).
• Midday, “Hog farming” (Minnesota Public Radio, St. Paul, June 21, 1995).
• Talking Point, “Industrial Agriculture” (WILL Illinois Public Media, Urbana, 1997).
• “Bob Scowcroft on Organic Agriculture Trends and Challenges (at Washington State University)” (Northwest Public Broadcasting, Pullman, WA, September 20, 2004).
• “Slow Money: Investing as if Food, Farms and Fertility Mattered” (Commonwealth Club of California, San Francisco, August 27, 2009).
• “Farm Together Now: Portraits of a New Food Movement” (Commonwealth Club of California, San Francisco, June 30, 2011).
• “Alpacas in Paradise” (KGLT, Bozeman, MT, date unknown).
• Connecticut Journal, “Interview with an Organic Farmer” (Connecticut Public Broadcasting Network, date unknown).
• “Subsistence: A Yup’ik Perspective” (KYUK, Bethel, AK, date unknown).
• Teachers’ Domain, “Factory Farms and Organic Alternatives” (WGBH Educational Foundation, Boston, MA, date unknown).

Politics

In the depressed 1930s, when times were even harder for farmers than they are today, American political leaders took counsel. They listened to ranchers, growers, sharecroppers, agronomists, soil experts, and marketing specialists; a few of those leaders raised questions of value. What, they asked, is agriculture for? What is the ultimate moral reason behind the pursuit of abundance, new farm technology, and an expanding economy—or is there one?

            —Donald Worster, environmental historian26

As the nature of agriculture has changed over the last two hundred years—moving away from small-scale family farming and towards larger, consolidated, and industrial models—so, too, have political discussions about agricultural issues. “A common point in the debate over U.S. farm programs,” states a 2005 report from the USDA, “has been that current policies were tailored for a time in American agriculture that no longer exists.” The report considers how technological efficiency, productivity, and consumer influence have shaped the realities of the industry in both positive and negative ways—as seen in the public broadcasting programs included in this anchor. 

Public broadcasting can provide records of how these significant changes were discussed, through coverage of farmers' meetings and opening events at the local level as well as through the national coverage of political events. While many of the programs in this anchor explore how politicians and officials engaged with agricultural workers through Policy and Rhetorical appeals, many others demonstrate how workers Collectively engaged with their representatives and shaped political discourse around their vested interests. 

Decisions about farm Policy have been a matter of public debate since before the first Depression-era farm bill in 1933. The broadcasts featured in this section explore the legislation, regulations, and government programs affecting the industry as well as their reception by farmers and the public. Several questions are centered in these debates: Should the government support farms during unstable times through crop insurance and/or subsidies? Should product prices and supply quotas be regulated at the federal level? And, more broadly: What should be the government’s role in supporting and overseeing an agricultural economy?

Though agriculture can seem like an isolating activity—especially in rural areas—the broadcasts in the Collectivity section illustrate what can be accomplished through organized political action. From protest marches to sponsored events supporting sustainable agriculture, the stories in this section mark how cooperatives, organizations, and coalitions of agricultural workers can capture attention and potentially effect change. 

In the late nineteenth century, farmers began to be imagined and discussed as a collective political force. This force continued to grow, adapt, splinter, and change in the new century—as evidenced in the Rhetoric section, with broadcasts as far back as 1957. These programs showcase political commentary and speeches that frame those working in farming both as a voting block and as a potential political base. In doing so, the speakers reduce diverse agricultural experience into a singular vision of “the farmer,” and we can see how the effects of this mentality continue to prioritize certain visions of farmers and farming today.

Policy

Featured Item

Reverend Jesse Jackson proposes policies for Black farmers in this 1988 Broadcast of “Election 88: Prairie Fire Presidential Candidates Agricultural Debate” (Iowa Public Television, January 23, 1988). (item below). Jackson’s proposal continues in the second part of the event coverage. https://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-37-343r26z7

“Up on the Farm” (Maryland Public Television, Owings Mills, December 6, 1982).

This agricultural news series includes coverage of events relating to farm policy, notably the 1982 Maryland Farm Bureau Convention and the Maryland Agricultural Pesticides Conference. Debates about government support/interference in farm issues happen alongside discussions of what to do with the state’s dairy surplus (proposed answer: make milkshakes available in schools). The conference on pesticide use, in particular, deals with issues of Practice and Environment as attendees learn how to avoid chemical barn fires and the dangers of skin exposure. “Many times that people have used a chemical over and over, they feel secure with it that they know how to use it,” says Jacquelyn Lucy of the Maryland Poison Center. “It’s important that farmers and farm families be aware—that every member of their family use them properly.”

“Clem Tillion on Halibut, Salmon Treaty” (KDLG, Dillingham, Alaska, April 26, 1983).

This radio broadcast covers the intricacies of Alaskan aquaculture in the midst of political maneuverings, as politicians attempt to stay in control of the state’s aquatic Resourcemanagement. Recently ousted Clem Tillion (former chairman of the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council) speaks on the halibut moratorium, which would greatly limit those able to lawfully harvest halibut. “We need to have some way to spread the take a bit over a longer period of the year,” Tillion asserts. Of the contested salmon treaty between the United States and Canada, he proclaims: “That’s a pickle slicer, I think.” With a potential “fish war” between North American fisheries, Tillion’s analysis of the situation illustrates the political stakeholders in waterway and Land access.

“Election 88: Prairie Fire Presidential Candidates Agricultural Debate” (Iowa Public Television, Johnston, January 23, 1988).

In this debate, sponsored by the three rural activist groups, Democratic candidates—Gary Hart, Bruce Babbitt, Michael Dukakis, Richard Gephardt, Rev. Jesse Jackson, and Paul Simon—answered questions relating to the 1980s farm crisis, global markets, and the Harkin-Gephardt farm bill in advance of the Iowa Caucus. This broadcast not only demonstrates the Rhetorical and political moves made by candidates but also the ways in which Land and Stewardship involve issues of class and race. “I think the question about Black land loss deserves at least a different answer,” Rev. Jackson said in response to Dukakis’s proposed plan to support minority farmers by helping small family farms more broadly. “They have a double burden: they’re not only ‘small’ and ‘family,’ but they’re also Black, which means often they cannot get loans—often they cannot get access to markets.” 

WPLN News Archive, “Tobacco Buyout Legislation” (WPLN/Nashville Public Radio, March 8, 2004).

“The tobacco buyout made it back in the headlines the moment the Speaker of the House started campaigning in Kentucky last month for a Republican race for a vacant House seat.” So begins this radio broadcast coverage of proposed buyout legislation, which would cover farmers’ financial losses if the tobacco market was deregulated and farmers lost government funding. But at the center of the debate is the question of tobacco regulation through FDA oversight. In this debate, we can see how morality and the ethics of substance cultivation motivated political policy, a point further emphasized in the documentary feature Tobacco Blues (see Philosophy).

Collectivity

Farm workers march for the right to unionize, as highlighted in The MacNeil/Lehrer Report on “Texas Farm Workers” (1977).

The MacNeil/Lehrer Report, “Texas Farm Workers” (WNET/WETA, New York/Washington, April 4, 1977).

This national news segment on the Texas Farm Workers movement follows seventeen demonstrators who walked over 400 miles to Austin in order to push for legislation that would affirm the right for farm workers to unionize in the state. Commenting on the event, Jack Angell, speaking on behalf of growers and the American Farm Bureau, suggested that the movement was driven by outsiders: intellectuals, professional organizers, clergy. But the interviews with the Texas Farm Workers union members contradict these assertions. When demonstrators arrived in the city, they were met with supporters and food as they gathered to celebrate and called attention to the cause. Here, Folklife, Labor, and activism intersect as cultural touchstones (food, music, and dance) serve to strengthen resolve and commitment in the community.

“Farm Workers Center” (KUNM, Albuquerque, NM, 1994).

This radio program covers the opening of the Centro de los Trabajadores Agrícolas Fronterizos in El Paso, Texas, which was a 1994 project completed by the Sin Fronteras Border Agricultural Workers Project. It was designed to be one of the first buildings that farm workers might see upon crossing the U.S./Mexico border, a Place embedded with meaning, and it is a demonstration of the collective work of labor activists for over ten years. “Nothing was given to us by the own will of the city,” says director Carlos Marentes. “Everything was the result of struggle: protest, blocking the international bridges, taking over city buildings.” Marentes’s mission didn’t end with the formation of the center; NPR reported on his work—now as a 70-year-old—to protect farm workers during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Wisconsin Magazine, episode 1522, “Farmers Going It Alone” (Wisconsin Public Television, Madison, date unknown).

This segment from a weekly television magazine examines how some farmers have shifted towards more sustainable agricultural Practices. Several farmers were featured for their work to educate others through onsite demonstrations on their own Land. But, as Dick Thompson of Boone, Iowa, points out, this requires not just a shift in Method but also in Philosophy: “The problem has to be solved on the inside. There has to be regeneration on the inside—that we're concerned about the land the community and people. And when that gets solved, then we'll take care of the land right, and we'll get out of the greed and ease syndromes.” Thompson hosted hundreds of visitors each summer, taking them out into his fields while discussing Stewardship and the Environmental impacts of industrial farming and pesticides. 

Rhetoric

This map from The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour on “Farm Politics” (1985) indicates open senate seats in the upcoming election (yellow) and states with open seats and a sizeable farm population (orange).

Politics in the Twentieth Century, “Divided We Plow” (San Bernadino Valley College, CA, January 1, 1957).

This political commentary from the 1950s demonstrates how public media talked about farmers in the decades following the Great Depression, as agricultural Practice became more and more industrialized and embedded in global economic systems. We hear from journalists, political scientists, sociologists, and farm organization leaders, all commenting on the potential political power of a farming base that was often tricky to pin down. “Since the end of World War II,” says Samuel Lubell, an author and political journalist of the time, “farmers have become perhaps the most roughly shifting voting element in the whole country.”

The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, “Farm Politics.” WNET/WETA, New York/Washington, October 10, 1985).

In a segment of this national news program, Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute reports on the Reagan-era farm crisis and its impact on the political landscape, with interviews from incumbent congresspeople as well as prospective candidates, many of them called “farm state Republicans.” The episode includes clips from congressional sessions, with senators and representatives reacting to Reagan’s farm program and considering its impacts on their agricultural constituents. The report aired in advance of the 1986 midterm elections, and much of the discussion is framed around partisan divides and how farm issues complicate party lines. By attending to the language and ideas invoked by politicians, we can better understand what rhetorical appeals were utilized to bring together and mobilize a Collective farming base.

“Green Acres: A History of Farming in America” (BackStory, Charlottesville, VA, 2013).

“Farmers have always been a big part of the American identity,” begins historian Peter Onuf, the host of this BackStory radio episode. “But in the early twentieth century, farmers became something else: a powerful political lobby.” In this broadcast, the entanglement of farming and politics is explored through the work of historians, political scientists, and other scholars. This program provides useful historical context for many other items in this anchor, discussing some of the landmark political moves and legislation of the twentieth century as well as the enduring idea of the small family farm Philosophy and its rhetorical significance in political discourse.

The Advocates, episode 322, “Should We Support the National Lettuce Boycotts” (WGBH, Boston, MA, March 8, 1973).

This audio recording of an episode from the PBS television series The Advocates presents a debate between those supporting a national boycott of iceberg lettuce and those opposed. Those speaking in favor of the boycott represent a coalition of farm-worker support, most notably Chicano activists and leaders of the United Farm Workers. Those against it include a state senator, California lettuce growers, and a representative from the Teamsters, who continue to deny that farm workers actually want union representation. Clergy spoke on both sides of the debate. Farm workers had been excluded from the 1930s labor legislation meant to protect workers in the United States, and leaders such as César Chávez worked to organize in order to protect agricultural workers through Collective action and striking power. These debates exemplify the rhetorical appeals—specifically to public consumers—on both sides of the Labor debate.

Additional Broadcasts Relating to “Politics"

• Muni, “VP Henry A. Wallace’s Inauguration of the School of Pan American Agriculture” (WNYC, New York, October 10, 1944).
• Grassroots Voter 1960, episode 4 (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1960).
• “Agriculture: The Need Is Now” (KUON, Lincoln, NB, April 28, 1961).
• MPR News Feature, “Migrant conference interviewee talks about United Farm Workers Strike and the Teamsters” (Minnesota Public Radio, April 20, 1973).
• “Cesar Chavez Speaks at the University of Dayton, Dayton Ohio” (WYSO, Yellow Springs, OH, July 1, 1973).
• Realidades, “Otro Paso” (WNET, New York, September 2, 1977).
• The MacNeil/Lehrer Report, “American Agriculture” (WNET/WETA, New York/Washington, November 7, 1977).
• The MacNeil/Lehrer Report, “Farmers Talk” (WNET/WETA, New York/Washington, March 9, 1978).
• The MacNeil/Lehrer Report, “Farm Depression” (WNET/WETA, New York/Washington, May 5, 1982).
• Midday, “Troubles facing the farm economy” (Minnesota Public Radio, St. Paul, May 23, 1982).
• MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, “Farm Crisis” (Educational Broadcasting Corp. & GWETA, February 14, 1985).
• Iowa Press, “Farm Crisis,” (Iowa Public Television, Johnston, February 17, 1985).
• Firing Line with William F. Buckley, Jr. “Are We Coddling the Farmers?” (South Carolina Educational Television Network, February 26, 1985).
• Crisis in Agriculture, “Program on Farm Rally in Ames (Iowa)” (Iowa Public Television, Johnston, February 27, 1985).
• WHA-TV Close Up, “Farm Crisis ’85: Strategies on Survival” (WHA-TV, Madison, April 18, 1985).
• MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, “Anatomy of a Crisis” (WNET/WETA & MacNeil/Lehrer Gannett Productions, November 22, 1985).
• Buenas Noches, “Boycat de Esparrago -Centro Campesino” (KDNA, Granger WA, April 14, 1986).
• Forum: Institute of Politics, episode 3, “American Farm Crisis” (WGBH Educational Foundation, Boston, MA, 1986).
• Louisiana: The State We’re In, “Farmers in Louisiana” (Louisiana Public Broadcasting, Baton Rouge, ca. 1980s).
• Focus 580, “Agricultures Social Contract” (WILL Illinois Public Media, Urbana, April 7, 1992).
• Midday: Mainstreet Farm Crisis (Minnesota Public Radio, St. Paul, November 10, 1995).
• Focus 580, “How the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Redefinition of the Word Organic Changed the Industry” (WILL Illinois Public Media, May 24, 2005).
• Minding Your Business, episode 399, “Agroterrorism” (KRWG, Las Cruces, NM, December 5, 2008).

Additional Readings

Baszile, Natalie. We Are Each Other’s Harvest: Celebrating African American Farmers, Land, and Legacy. New York: HarperCollins, 2021.

Brown, David. Rural People and Communities in the 21st Century: Resilience and Transformation. Medford, MA: Polity Press, 2019.

Burton, Rob. The Good Farmer: Culture and Identity in Food and Agriculture. New York: Routledge, 2021. 

Carlisle, Liz. Healing Grounds: Climate, Justice, and the Deep Roots of Regenerative Farming. Washington: Island Press, 2022.

Daniel, Jaster. Bygone Utopias and Farm Protest in the Rural Midwest: Returning Home. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021. 

Daniel, Pete. Dispossession: Discrimination against African American Farmers in the Age of Civil Rights. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013. 

Dawson, Julie C., and Alfonso Morales. Cities of Farmers: Urban Agricultural Practices and Processes. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2016. 

Eldredge, Charles C. We Gather Together: American Artists and the Harvest. Oakland: University of California Press, 2021.

Fitzgerald, Deborah. Every Farm a Factory: The Industrial Ideal in American Agriculture. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003.

Foner, Eric. Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877. New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 1988.

Gardner, Bruce L. American Agriculture in the Twentieth Century: How It Flourished and What It Cost. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006.

Jackson, Wes, Wendell Berry, and Bruce Colman, editors. Meeting the Expectations of the Land: Essays in Sustainable Agriculture and Stewardship. San Francisco: North Point Press, 1984.

Laidlaw, Zoë, and Alan Lester, editors. Indigenous Communities and Settler Colonialism: Land Holding, Loss and Survival in an Interconnected World. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillon, 2015. 

Martin, Phillip L. Promise Unfulfilled; Unions, Immigration and the Farm Workers. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003.

Minkoff-Zern, Laura-Anne. The New American Farmer: Immigration, Race, and the Struggle for Sustainability. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2019.

Motter, Jeff, Stephanie Houston, and Ross Singer. Rooted Resistance: Agrarian Myth in Modern America. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2020. 

Paddock, Joe, Nancy Paddock, and Carol Bly. Soil and Survival: Land Stewardship and the Future of American Agriculture. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1986. 

Pawlick, Thomas F. The Invisible Farm: The Worldwide Decline of Farm News and Agricultural Journalism Training. Chicago: Burnham, 2001.

Peterson, Bo. Washing Our Hands in the Clouds: Joe Williams, His Forebears, and Black Farms in South Carolina. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2015. 

Reid, Debra A., and Evan P. Bennett, editors. Beyond Forty Acres and a Mule: African American Landowning Families Since Reconstruction. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2012. 

Strange, Marty. Family Farming: A New Economic Vision. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2008. 

Ward, William B. Reporting Agriculture Through Newspapers, Magazines, Radio, Television. Ithaca: Comstock Publishing, 1959. 

Notes

1 Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 (New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 1988).

2 Monica Richmond Gisolfi, “From Crop Lien to Contract Farming: The Roots of Agribusiness in the American South, 1929-1939,” Agricultural History 80, no. 2 (Spring 2006): 167-89, https://www.jstor.org/stable/3744805; Michael D. Thompson, “This Little Piggy Went to Market: The Commercialization of Hog Production in Eastern North Carolina from William Shay to Wendell Murphy,” Agricultural History 74, no. 2 (Spring 2000): 581, https://www.jstor.org/stable/3744872. 

3 Deborah Fitzgerald, Every Farm a Factory: The Industrial Ideal in American Agriculture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 12.

4 Fitzgerald, Every Farm a Factory, 7-8.

5 David M. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 208-9.

6 Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern, The New American Farmer: Immigration, Race, and the Struggle for Sustainability (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2019). 

7 Ross Singer, Stephanie Grey, and Jeff Motter, Rooted Resistance: Agrarian Myth in Modern America (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2020), 191. 

8 Josh Shepperd, “Public Broadcasting,” in A Companion to the History of American Broadcasting, ed. Aniko Bodroghkozy (Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, 2018), 231.

9 N. Scott Momaday, “A First American Views His Land,” National Geographic Magazine, vol. 150, no. 1 (1976): 13-18. 

10 Kent C. Ryden, Mapping the Invisible Landscape: Folklore, Writing, and Sense of Place (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1993), 59.

11 Walter L. Hixson, “Adaptation, Resistance, and Representation in the Modern US Settler State,” in The Routledge Handbook of the History of Settler Colonialism, eds. Lorenzo Veracini and Edward Cavanagh (New York: Routledge, 2017), 174. 

12 Analena Hope Hassberg, “Introduction,” in Natalie Baszile, ed., We Are Each Other’s Harvest: Celebrating African American Farmers, Land, and Legacy (New York: Amistad, 2021), 8.

13 Gerald W. Creed and Barbara Ching, “Recognizing Rusticity: Identity and the Power of Place,” in Knowing Your Place: Rural Identity and Cultural Hierarchy, ed. Gerald W. Creed and Barbara Ching (New York: Routledge, 1997), 19-31. 

14 The Cesar E. Chavez Foundation, “Education of the Heart: Cesar Chavez in His Own Words,” United Farm Workers, https://ufw.org/research/history/education-heart-cesar-chavez-words.

15 Minkoff-Zern, New American Farmer, 31-32. 

16 Sara Kohlbeck, Andrew Schramm, Terri deRoon-Cassini, Stephen Hargarten, and Katherine Quinn, “Farmer Suicide in Wisconsin: A Qualitative Analysis,” The Journal of Rural Health 38, no.3 (2022): 547, https://doi.org/10.1111/jrh.12622. 

17 Joe Paddock, Nancy Paddock, and Carol Bly, Soil and Survival: Land Stewardship and the Future of American Agriculture(San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1986) 4.

18 Richard M. Adams, Brian H. Hurd, Stephanie Lenhart, and Neil Leary, “Effects of Global Climate Change on Agriculture: An Interpretive Review,” Climate Research 11, no. 1 (1998): 19.

19 Thomas F. Pawlick, The Invisible Farm: The Worldwide Decline of Farm News and Agricultural Journalism Training(Chicago: Burnham, 2001), 11. 

20 Mary Hufford, American Folklife: A Commonwealth of Cultures (Washington, DC: American Folklife Center, 1991), 1, https://maint.loc.gov/folklife/cwc/

21 Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Destination Culture: Tourism, Museums, and Heritage (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 9.

22 Pawlick, Invisible Farm.

23 Rob J. F. Burton, Jérémie Forney, Paul Stock, and Lee-Ann Sutherland, The Good Farmer: Culture and Identity in Food and Agriculture (New York: Routledge, 2021), 1.

24 Ronald Sandler, “Virtue Theory, Food, and Agriculture,” in Encyclopedia of Food and Agricultural Ethics, ed. David M. Kaplan (Springer, 2019), https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-1179-9. 

25 Fitzgerald, Every Farm a Factory.

26 Donald Worster, “Good Farming and the Public Good,” in Meeting the Expectations of the Land: Essays in Sustainable Agriculture and Stewardship, ed. Wes Jackson, Wendell Berry, and Bruce Colman (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1984), 33.