1. Benyus, Biomimicry, 16.
2. Costello, Prairie World, 63.
3. Saunders et al., Hotter and Drier.
4. “Last Stand of the Tallgrass Prairie,” National Park Service, July 18, 2017, http://www.nps.gov/tapr/index.htm.
5. Agribusiness has two definitions: it may be agriculture practiced using commercial standards, especially the application of advanced technology; and it may refer to a group of businesses dealing with agricultural produce and services to aid production. The “agribusiness” here means both, but primarily the latter. The powerful business players have developed a self-promotion system that has entangled supposedly objective media outlets such as Tri-State Neighbor.
6. I took a screen shot of Monsanto’s website on May 17, 2017, at the URL below. At the time, the page included this quote: “We are proud to be a sustainable agriculture company.” “Improving Agriculture,” Monsanto, accessed May 17, 2017, http://www.monsanto.com/improvingagriculture/pages/default.aspx.
1. About 444,000 acres of the EAA is sugarcane. Giant sugar corporations like Florida Crystals, King Ranch, and United States Sugar Corporation own most of those acres. Rocky Mountain National Park is 265,761 acres, if that helps put the EAA’s sugarcane acreage in perspective. “Sugarcane, King of Crops,” Palm Beach County History Online, accessed March 8, 2017, http://www.pbchistoryonline.org/page/sugarcane-king-of-the-crops.
2. An acre is 4,840 square yards, roughly the size of a football field.
3. During the vegetable and leaf part of the rotation, farmers usually harvest a crop and immediately plant a totally different one in its place—and repeat the process every few weeks or months depending on the crop’s maturity cycle. A given block on Roth Farms is home to many different crops from September to April, whereas in places like Kansas or Illinois, where the growing season is short, one conventional field is home to one type of crop per summer.
4. Roth Farms also grows sweet corn and green beans in joint venture with other farms; Ryan helps a bit with land preparation on those crops, but that’s it.
5. Hoppe and Banker, Structure and Finances, 2010, 2.
6. Hoppe, Structure and Finances, 2014, iii.
7. Data in this paragraph from Hoppe, Structure and Finances, 2014, iii–iv.
8. Data in this paragraph from Hoppe, Structure and Finances, 2014, iii–iv.
9. Koch and Peden, Life and Selected Writings of Thomas Jefferson, 377.
10. Hamilton, Deeply Rooted, 295.
11. Berry, Unsettling of America, 45–46.
12. Kramer, Three Farms, 197–274.
1. Barber, Third Plate, 49.
2. Barber, Third Plate, 48–49.
3. Schlebecker, Whereby We Thrive, 25–35
4. I recognize that the story of the Plains Indians deserves far more attention than I can provide here. For further reading, start with Welch, Killing Custer, and Ewers, Plains Indian History. Later, Plains Indians started ranching and farming on the reservations and elsewhere, starting a unique cowboy culture that remains today.
5. Hurt, Problems of Plenty, 5.
6. Sulc and Tracy, “Integrated Crop-Livestock Systems,” 335.
7. Sulc and Tracy, “Integrated Crop-Livestock Systems,” 335.
8. Sulc and Tracy, “Integrated Crop-Livestock Systems,” 335.
9. Hurt, Problems of Plenty, 13.
10. Pripps, Big Book of Farmall Tractors, 33.
11. It is interesting that these terms, industrial and agricultural, remain separate in 1930.
12. While looking into modern advertising rhetoric, I came across the referenced ad for the John Deere sprayer. I accessed the included quotes on December 3, 2014. The language has since been modified slightly as new sprayers have come on the market. Deere & Company, “Self-Propelled Sprayers,” accessed December 3, 2014, https://www.deere.com/en_US/products/equipment/self_propelled_sprayers/self_propelled_sprayers.page?.
13. For further reading on the history of American agriculture, see R. Douglas Hurt, American Agriculture and The Problems of Plenty; David Dary, Cowboy Culture; Barry Estabrook, Tomatoland; Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma; Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America; Eric Schlosser, Fast Food Nation; and Dan Barber, The Third Plate.
14. Information in this paragraph comes from Philpott, “Brief History.”
15. Hurt, Problems of Plenty, 120.
16. Hurt, Problems of Plenty, 116.
17. Davis and Goldberg, Concept of Agribusiness, 2.
18. Pollan, Omnivore’s Dilemma, 53.
19. Berry, Unsettling of America, 33.
20. Pollan, Omnivore’s Dilemma, 51–52.
21. Very, very heavily: “Between 1970 and 1980, the amount of farm mortgage debt outstanding in the U.S. grew from $71.4 billion to $113.2 billion in constant 1982 dollars, an increase of 59 percent” (Barnett, “Farm Financial Crisis,” 371).
22. An elevator is a grain storage tower that contains a lifting mechanism that scoops grain from the bottom. The term usually indicates the entire elevator complex—the offices, grain testing facility, storage units, and marketing service. Farmers sell their grain to the elevator instead of local buyers, which means selling it to a company that markets the grain into the food and livestock feed industries.
23. Pollan, Omnivore’s Dilemma, 39.
24. WD refers to the Allis-Chalmers WD model tractor; M refers to the Farmall M model tractor. Both tractors were popular during the 1950s.
25. Barnett, “Farm Financial Crisis,” 375–76.
26. Hurt, Problems of Plenty, 148–49.
27. Berry, Unsettling of America, 59.
28. Ikerd, Crisis and Opportunity, 4–5.
29. Schlosser, Fast Food Nation, 199–20.
30. Pollan, Omnivore’s Dilemma, 54.
31. United States Department of Agriculture, 2012 Census of Agriculture, volume 1, chapter 1: U.S. National Level Data, table 2, “Market Value of Agricultural Products Sold Including Landlord’s Share and Direct Sales: 2012 and 2007,” May 2014, http://www.agcensus.usda.gov/Publications/2012/Full_Report/Volume_1,_Chapter_1_US/.
32. P. Roberts, End of Food, 280.
1. “Muck” is the term for the soil exposed by draining wetlands, like the EAA’s soil. Muck is deep black in color and made of organic matter in various states of decay—the floor of a former swamp.
2. Sugarcane is creating in Florida what corn has already been creating in the Midwest: a biological dead zone. On the 100,000-acre-plus sugarcane farms in the EAA, there is virtually no biodiversity. Growing the same crop over and over is stressful on the soil and encourages pests, weeds, and herbicide resistance. I find it compelling that a member of the grass family, sugarcane, has taken over the EAA, while a member of the same family, corn, has taken over most of the Midwest. Grass is poised to control more of South America, too, with the increasing number of sugarcane plantations and corn farms in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay.
3. Mealer, Muck City, 88.
4. Sarah Klein, Jacqlyn Witmer, Amanda Tian, and Caroline Smith DeWaal, “The Ten Riskiest Foods Regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration,” Center for Science in the Public Interest, October 6, 2009, http://www.cspinet.org/new/pdf/cspi_top_10_fda.pdf.
5. Madeline Drexler, “Foodborne Illness: Who Monitors Our Food?” The Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism, September 16, 2011, http://www.brandeis.edu/investigate/foodborne-illness/who-monitors-food.html.
6. Albritton, Let Them Eat Junk, 83.
1. Nationally, eight of every ten thousand high school players make it to the NFL each year. From 1985 to 2012, Belle Glade has averaged about one player for every year. The school has just over one thousand students, meaning the town’s representation in the NFL is astoundingly high, especially considering the poverty level. Mealer, Muck City, 11.
2. Ellyn Ferguson and Randy Loftis, “Plague Baffles Town: Belle Glade AIDS Rate Tops in U.S.,” Miami Herald, August 11, 1985, PDF, 1.
3. “Uniform Crime Report, 2003,” Federal Bureau of Investigation, October 27, 2004, http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2003.
4. Lisa Rab, “Belle Glade Faces its Demons after a Senseless Murder,” Broward/Palm Beach New Times, March 22, 2012, http://www.browardpalmbeach.com/2012-03-22/news/belle-glade-faces-its-demons-after-a-senseless-murder/full/.
5. Big Sugar, like Big Corn, is propped up by the federal government with price supports, domestic marketing allotments (American sugar growers are guaranteed 85 percent of the market, no matter what), and tariffs on imported sugar. So the government encouraged sugar growers to expand by crafting favorable policies, a move that damaged local economies and created an “empire of sugar” that holds too much power, like Big Tobacco and Big Oil.
6. Ikerd, Crisis and Opportunity, 5.
7. Information about tomato pickers, the piece system, and overtime pay is from Estabrook, Tomatoland, xix.
8. Rodriguez, “Cheap Food,” 125–30.
9. Literature has often focused on impoverished farm workers. The plight of workers in the Chicago stockyards is chronicled in the fiction-but-practically-nonfiction book The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. John Steinbeck’s famous novel The Grapes of Wrath records the horrifying story of an Oklahoma farm family that fled the Dust Bowl, only to find themselves starving and broke working on California farms.
10. Information about the bracero program is from Hurt, Problems of Plenty, 102.
11. Estabrook, Tomatoland, xix.
12. Estabrook, Tomatoland, xvii.
13. Rodriguez, “Cheap Food,” 125.
1. Technically, the EAA has two main soil types, muck and sand. The muck gives way to sandy, mineralized soils at the edges of the EAA, closer to the ocean. Muck is more prevalent, however.
2. M. R. McDonald, “Management of Organic Soils,” Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food, and Rural Affairs, AgDex No. 510, last modified April 2010, http://www.omafra.gov.on.ca/english/crops/facts/93-053.htm.
3. Muck facts are from the University of Idaho’s “Twelve Soil Orders: Soil Taxonomy,” University of Idaho College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, last modified November 2013, http://www.cals.uidaho.edu/soilorders/; and from George Silva, “Keeping Muck Soils Sustainable,” Michigan State University Extension, November 2, 2012, http://msue.anr.msu.edu/news/keeping_muck_soils_sustainable.
4. Information in this paragraph is from Wright and Hanlon, “Organic Matter,” 1–4.
5. Ingebritsen et al., “Florida Everglades,” 101.
6. “Did You Know? Facts about EREC,” Everglades Research and Education Center, University of Florida, July 25, 2011, http://erec.ifas.ufl.edu/did_you_know_facts.shtml.
7. Tihansky, “Sinkholes, West-Central Florida,” 2–3.
8. Muck information in this paragraph comes from Ingebritsen et al., “Florida Everglades,” 95–106.
9. Information on Iowa soil is from Wilde, “Study: Soil Eroding Faster than Estimated.”
10. A collection of five pillars at a rest stop along Highway 80 in Adair County, Iowa, illustrates this loss. The first pillar, representing the soil level in 1850, is the tallest. The pillars grow steadily shorter until the year 2000 (the artwork was installed in 2002). Black stems of grass decorate the upper portion of each pillar to commemorate the tallgrass prairie Iowa once was. Kind of spooky how art can make something as devastating as soil loss look stately.
11. Ingebritsen et al., “Florida Everglades,” 103.
12. EAA farming practices and subsidence data are from Wright and Hanlon, “Organic Matter,” 1–4.
1. United States Department of Agriculture, 2012 Census of Agriculture, volume 1, chapter 1: U.S. National Level Data, table 34, “Other Animals and Animal Products – Inventory: 2012 and 2007,” May 2014, http://www.agcensus.usda.gov/Publications/2012/Full_Report/Volume_1,_Chapter_1_US/.
2. In 2009, artist and technologist Stephen Von Worley mapped the McDonald’s in the lower forty-eight states at the time, revealing that the McFarthest Spot lies between Glad Valley and Meadow, just east of my parents’ house. The McFarthest Spot has since moved to a lonely spot in Nevada. Stephen Von Worley, “Where the Buffalo Roamed: How Far Can You Get from McDonald’s?” Data Pointed, September 22, 2009, http://www.datapointed.net/2009/09/distance-to-nearest-mcdonalds/.
3. We routinely name our vehicles. There’s also New Blue, a 1999 diesel that Dad bought in 2014, hence the “new” part. There’s also Gary, a ’90s-era hand-me-down from my dad’s father. Its previous owners applied printed decals of their names by each door: Gary and Jean. Those are not my grandparents’ names, but they kept the decals on the entire time they owned the truck, as my dad still does.
4. Saunders et al., “Hotter and Drier,” 2.
5. Savory, Holistic Management, 17–19.
6. Pollan, Omnivore’s Dilemma, 213.
7. I think the following is a particularly insightful part of the chapter: “Instead of fixing what’s really broken or finding a fundamentally different path, we print more money, invent a new drug, make a bigger bomb, suppress or buy off dissent, or build a dam . . . think carefully about what might be causing your problem.” Savory, Holistic Management, 274.
8. As an example, Savory encourages all people to consider the effects of their daily actions: “Each day we put the utmost concentration and energy into our chosen tasks, seldom reflecting that we work within a greater whole that our actions will affect, slowly, cumulatively, and often dramatically. In our culture it is mainly philosophers who concern themselves with this larger issue because it is hard to see how individuals caught up in daily life can take responsibility for the long-term consequence of their actions, but they can. We can” (Savory, Holistic Management, 17).
9. Matthew Cawood, “More Livestock Is Climate Change Key,” The Land, July 10, 2011, http://www.theland.com.au/news/agriculture/cattle/general-news/more-livestock-is-climate-change-key/2218226.aspx?storypage=0.
10. “Time Line of the American Bison,” U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, accessed September 6, 2014, http://www.fws.gov/bisonrange/timeline.htm.
11. “Time Line of the American Bison,” U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, accessed September 6, 2014, http://www.fws.go/bisonrange/timeline.htm.
12. Allred, Fuhlendorf, and Hamilton, “The Role of Herbivores in Great Plains Conservation,” 1.
13. Ranchers commonly refer to their livestock as “critters.” Though the term sounds strange, it’s not derogatory. It’s like cowboys of old calling the cattle “little doggies” on trail drives.
1. Savory, Holistic Management, 38.
2. That buffalo doesn’t live on the same fifteen acres year-round. The stocking rate is a simple measure of how many livestock a ranch can support, in this case the ranch’s grazing acres divided by the number of buffalo.
3. D’Odorico et al., “Global Desertification,” 328.
4. “Rural Poverty and Desertification,” International Fund for Agricultural Development, August 2010, https://www.ifad.org/documents/10180/77105e91-6f72-44ff-aa87-eedb57d730ba.
5. Karl, Melillo, and Peterson, eds., Global Climate Change Impacts, 83–84.
6. Saunders et al., “Hotter and Drier,” v.
7. Saunders et al., “Hotter and Drier,” 29–30.
8. Saunders et al., “Hotter and Drier,” iv.
9. Vose et al., “Temperature Changes in the United States,” 185–206.
10. Barber, Third Plate, 70–71.
11. Ranchers have been told this by university researchers, Cooperative Extension Service educators, and other grazing “experts” like seed companies. Many ranchers believe cool-season grasses are the norm. This is another example of farmers and ranchers being told how to operate by agribusiness, to their detriment.
12. Costello, Prairie World, 65.
13. Tober and Chamrad, “Warm-Season Grasses,” 227.
14. Information about grass types in this paragraph is from Tober and Chamrad, “Warm-Season Grasses,” 227.
15. Ivomec is a commonly used liquid parasiticide that ranchers pour on their cattle to kill roundworms, lungworms, grubs, sucking lice, biting lice, mange mites, and horn flies.
16. Bowman and Zilberman, “Economic Factors,” 34.
17. Boxler, “Fly Control for Cattle on Pasture in Nebraska,” University of Nebraska–Lincoln Beef Division, May 2016, https://beef.unl.edu/cattleproduction/controllingflies.
18. Burns, Collins, and Smith, “Plant Community Response to Loss of Large Herbivores,” 2337–39.
19. Burns, Collins, and Smith, “Plant Community Response to Loss of Large Herbivores,” 2329.
1. USDA National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference, accessed July 12, 2013, http://ndb.nal.usda.gov.
2. Barber, Third Plate, 114–15.
3. Barber, Third Plate, 115.
4. “Summary of Important Health Benefits of Grass-fed Meats, Eggs, and Dairy,” Eat Wild, accessed July 12, 2013, http://www.eatwild.com/healthbenefits.htm.
5. Brucellosis is a livestock disease of European origin that devastated U.S. herds in the early twentieth century and also spread to elk and wild bison. Since 1934 the Cooperative State Federal Brucellosis Eradication Program has encouraged ranchers to vaccinate for this disease that’s known as undulating fever or Malta fever in humans. Few buyers will purchase livestock that are not Bangs vaccinated.
6. Weaning is a natural occurrence, heartbreaking as it is to watch. Mammals do not provide milk for their young indefinitely. After half a year or more, a cow’s body is ready to stop giving milk to feed a five-hundred-pound “baby.” She’s often pregnant with next year’s calf as well, and sometimes she’s already weaned the calf on her own by this point. Despite the calf’s two days of bawling for his mother, the weaning would have happened anyway.
7. Grain is not inherently bad. For hundreds of years, farmers have fed livestock grain for the month or so leading up to slaughter. The ratios in CAFOs, however, are far too grain-heavy, last too long, and include the toxic grain from conventional farms.
8. Albritton, Let Them Eat Junk, 102–3.
9. Albritton, Let Them Eat Junk, 102.
10. Remember how Savory pointed out that herbivores don’t like to stay long on areas they’ve soiled, which is why they move often? It must be torture for our steer to stand, day in and day out, in his own waste along with the waste of thousands of other cattle.
11. Sabrina Tavernise, “Farm Use of Antibiotics Defies Scrutiny,” New York Times, September 3, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/04/health/use-of-antibiotics-in-animals-raised-for-food-defies-scrutiny.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0.
12. Raloff, “Hormones,” 11.
13. “Interview with Michael Pollan,” PBS Frontline, June 30, 2002, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/meat/interviews/pollan.html.
14. Hribar, Understanding Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, 5.
15. Sabrina Tavernise, “Antibiotics in Livestock: FDA Finds Use Is Rising,” New York Times, October 2, 2014.
16. Albritton, Let Them Eat Junk, 111.
17. “Interview with Michael Pollan,” PBS Frontline, June 30, 2002, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/meat/interviews/pollan.html.
18. “Interview with Michael Pollan,” PBS Frontline, June 30, 2002, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/meat/interviews/pollan.html.
19. “Bison by the Numbers,” National Bison Association, https://bisoncentral.com/bison-by-the-numbers/.
1. USDA Livestock Slaughter 2016 Summary, ISSN: 0499–0544, National Agriculture Statistics Service, April 2017, http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/usda/current/LiveSlauSu/LiveSlauSu-04-19-2017.pdf, p. 6.
2. USDA Livestock Slaughter 2016 Summary, 6.
3. “Investor Fact Book – Fiscal Year 2017,” Tyson Foods, Inc., 2017, PDF, 4, http://ir.tyson.com/investor-relations/investor-overview/tyson-factbook/.
4. See Schlosser, Fast Food Nation, for further information about labor conditions inside slaughterhouses.
5. “Interview with Michael Pollan,” PBS Frontline, June 30, 2002, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/meat/interviews/pollan.html.
6. Lim et al. “Brief Overview of Escherichia coli,” 5–14.
7. Information in this paragraph is from “Interview with Michael Pollan,” PBS Frontline, June 30, 2002, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/meat/interviews/pollan.html.
8. Reed, Rebels for the Soil, 107.
9. Reed, Rebels for the Soil, 99–100.
10. The Organic Watergate—White Paper. “Connecting the Dots: Corporate Influence at the USDA’s National Organic Program” (Cornucopia WI: Cornucopia Institute, May 2012), 3, PDF.
11. The Organic Watergate, “Connecting the Dots,” 4.
12. The Organic Watergate, “Connecting the Dots,” 4.
13. Take a look at an infographic called “Who Owns Organic” here: http://www.cornucopia.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Organic-chart-feb-2014.jpg. It’s astounding.
14. Carey Gillam, “After Washington GMO Label Battle, Both Sides Eye National Fight,” Reuters, November 8, 2013, http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/08/us-usa-gmo-labeling-idusbre9a70uu20131108.
15. Information in the preceding paragraphs about organic beef production and slaughter is from “Organic Livestock Requirements,” National Organic Program, Agricultural Marketing Service, USDA, February 2013, https://www.ams.usda.gov/sites/default/files/media/Organic%20Livestock%20Requirements.pdf; and “Organic Meat and Poultry Processing Basics,” Minnesota Department of Agriculture, March 2005, http://www.mda.state.mn.us/Global/MDADocs/food/organic/organicmeatprod.aspx.
16. Albritton, Let Them Eat Junk, 155.
1. Gladwell, Tipping Point, 179–87.
2. Albritton, Let Them Eat Junk, 186.
3. Albritton, Let Them Eat Junk, 193.
4. Albritton, Let Them Eat Junk, 186.
5. Kenner, “Exploring the Corporate Powers Behind the Way We Eat,” 37.
6. Cain, “Food, Inglorious Food,” 275.
7. Albritton, Let Them Eat Junk, 189.
8. “2012 Presidential Race,” Center for Responsive Politics, accessed July 2, 2013, https://www.opensecrets.org/pres12/. To put these numbers into context, super PAC contributions totaled $200 million for Romney and $58 million for Obama. John Hudson, “The Most Expensive Election in History by the Numbers,” Atlantic Wire, November 6, 2012, http://www.thewire.com/politics/2012/11/most-expensive-election-history-numbers/58745/.
9. “Top Industries, Federal Election Data for Hillary Clinton, 2016 Cycle,” Center for Responsive Politics, accessed May 16, 2017, https://www.opensecrets.org/pres16/industries?id=N00000019; and “Top Industries, Federal Election Data for Donald Trump, 2016 Cycle,” Center for Responsive Politics, accessed May 16, 2017, https://www.opensecrets.org/pres16/industries?id=N00023864.
10. Adam Liptak, “Justices, 5–4, Reject Corporate Spending Limit,” New York Times, January 21, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/22/us/politics/22scotus.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0.
11. Schlosser, Fast Food Nation, 261.
12. Schlosser, Fast Food Nation, 273–75.
13. The average corn yield in the U.S. is 158.8 bushels per acre. In Iowa, some fields yield well over 200 bushels an acre.
14. Liquid anhydrous ammonia is one form of synthetic nitrogen. Farmers purchase it by the tank-load and apply it with special injection drills. This form of nitrogen fertilizer can burn the skin severely and can cause death by asphyxiation. As Extension Specialist John Shutske warns farmers, “Anhydrous ammonia is caustic and causes severe chemical burns. Body tissues that contain a high percentage of water, such as the eyes, skin, and respiratory tract, are very easily burned. Victims exposed to even small amounts of ammonia require immediate treatment with large quantities of water to minimize the damage.” He urges farmers to wear protective goggles, rubber gloves, and heavy-duty, long-sleeved shirts. Anyone who stores anhydrous in bulk should carry a rainsuit and two gas masks. This is what our food plants “eat,” as do we when we consume them. John Shutske, “Using Anhydrous Ammonia Safely on the Farm,” University of Minnesota Extension Service, WW–02326, 2005, http://www.extension.umn.edu/agriculture/nutrient-management/nitrogen/using-anhydrous-ammonia-safely-on-the-farm/.
15. Albritton, Let Them Eat Junk, 151.
16. Philpott, “Brief History.”
17. Pollan, Omnivore’s Dilemma, 42.
18. Pollan, Omnivore’s Dilemma, 44.
19. Pollan, Omnivore’s Dilemma, 45.
20. Pollan, Omnivore’s Dilemma, 46.
21. Albritton, Let Them Eat Junk, 22.
1. At first I thought it strange for a farmer to live half a block from the beach in a neighborhood chock-full of fabulously wealthy people, but Kevin is truly a surfer at heart and he couldn’t bear to live too far from the ocean. He and his wife purchased the house thirty-five years ago, when beachfront houses were more affordable than they are today. Plus, his farm is too small to include housing.
2. Barber, Third Plate, 87.
3. Barber, Third Plate, 94.
4. Barber, Third Plate, 97–98.
5. Weeds are generally understood as the farmer’s mortal enemy, which makes Kevin’s moderate view surprising. The multibillion-dollar herbicide industry reinforces the view that weeds are evil plants. Organic farmers use other weed-control measures in addition to plastic, such as crop rotation, mechanical tillage, hand-weeding, cover crops, mulches, and flame weeding.
6. These strategies and others described later work for regenerative farming in general, not organic regenerative only.
7. “The Farming Systems Trial: Celebrating 30 Years,” Rodale Institute, October 2011, http://rodaleinstitute.org/assets/FSTbookletFINAL.pdf, 8.
1. Wilcher, “Greening of Milton Criticism,” 1021.
2. Wilcher, “Greening of Milton Criticism,” 1021.
3. Wilcher, “Greening of Milton Criticism,” 1021.
4. Leopold, Sand County Almanac, viii.
5. For more information on organic standards, see “Organic Production and Handling Standards,” National Organic Program, Agricultural Marketing Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, November 2016, https://www.ams.usda.gov/publications/content/organic-production-handling-standards.
1. “Acreage,” USDA National Agriculture Statistics Service, June 2017, 29 and 31, http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/usda/current/Acre/Acre-06-30-2017.pdf.
2. Monsanto once manufactured DDT, Agent Orange, and PCBs, and it has a dark history that includes releasing toxins into a river and giving an entire community cancer, suing farmers and journalists, and much more. For more on Monsanto, see Lords of the Harvest: Biotech, Big Money, and the Future of Food by Daniel Charles and The World According to Monsanto: Pollution, Corruption, and the Control of the World’s Food Supply by Marie-Monique Robin.
3. United States Department of Agriculture, 2012 Census of Agriculture, “Highlights: Farm and Farmland,” September 2014, https://www.agcensus.usda.gov/Publications/2012/Online_Resources/Highlights/Farms_and_Farmland/Highlights_Farms_and_Farmland.pdf.
4. National Research Council, Impact of Genetically Engineered Crops, 4.
5. Philpott, “Monsanto GM Soy.”
6. Conca, “It’s Final.”
7. Conca, “It’s Final.”
8. Pollan, Omnivore’s Dilemma, 40.
9. Conca, “It’s Final.”
10. Gassmann et al., “Field-Evolved Resistance to Bt Maize,” 1.
11. Johnson and O’Connor, “These Charts Show Every Genetically Modified Food.”
12. Information about Seralini is from the 2013 film GMO OMG, directed by Jeremy Seifert, and “Controversial Seralini Study Linking GM to Cancer in Rats Is Republished,” The Guardian, June 24, 2014, http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jun/24/controversial-seralini-study-gm-cancer-rats-republished.
13. “The Farming Systems Trial: Celebrating 30 Years,” Rodale Institute, October 2011, http://rodaleinstitute.org/assets/FSTbookletFINAL.pdf.
14. Let’s not take the Rodale Institute’s word alone. A sixteen-year (and ongoing) study, called the Long-Term Agroecological Research (LTAR) experiment, conducted by Iowa State University’s Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture that compares organic and conventional crop rotations experienced results similar to Rodale’s. See https://www.leopold.iastate.edu/long-term-agroecological-research for more information.
1. “Platinum Clubs of America 2016-18: Top 150 Country Clubs,” John Sibbald Associates, Inc., 2016, https://clubleadersforum.com/pcoa/the-2016-lists/top-150-country-clubs-2016/.
2. Apparently the fax machine has not gone out of vogue with some Vero chefs. As Kevin says, “In the middle of the night I hear my fax machine go off and I’m like, money!”
3. Berry, Unsettling of America, 37–38.
1. Obach, “Theoretical Interpretations,” 229.
2. Obach, “Theoretical Interpretations,” 232.
3. Obach, “Theoretical Interpretations,” 230.
4. Obach, “Theoretical Interpretations,” 234.
5. Albritton, Let Them Eat Junk, 180.
6. “The Emissions Gap Report 2013,” United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP), November 2013, 24, http://web.unep.org/sites/default/files/EGR2013/EmissionsGapReport_2013_high-res.pdf.
7. By no means do I think this is the case with every farming community or every farmer. There are those who want to change, but do not know how to or are afraid to. I base my comments on rural communities here and throughout on eighteen years of living in a farming community and my year with Tri-State Neighbor, plus the interviews for this book.
8. The Emissions Gap Report 2013, United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP), November 2013, 24, http://web.unep.org/sites/default/files/EGR2013/EmissionsGapReport_2013_high-res.pdf.
9. “Extension,” USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture, accessed April 30, 2018, https://nifa.usda.gov/extension.
10. Berry, Unsettling of America, 151.
11. Berry, Unsettling of America, 151–52.
12. A contentious goal, because reducing agriculture to a science is arguably impossible: “Because the soil is alive, various, intricate, and because its processes yield more readily to imitation than to analysis, more readily to care than to coercion, agriculture can never be an exact science. There is an inescapable kinship between farming and art, for farming depends as much on character, devotion, imagination, and the sense of structure, as on knowledge. It is a practical art.” Berry, Unsettling of America, 87.
13. Information in this paragraph is from Food & Water Watch, Public Research, Private Gain: Corporate Influence Over University Agricultural Research, April 26, 2012, https://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/news/public-research-private-gain-corporate-influence-over-university-agricultural-research.
14. Food & Water Watch, Public Research, Private Gain, 15.
1. Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2014–15 Edition, Bureau of Labor Statistics, January 2014, http://www.bls.gov/ooh/.
2. Dimitri and Oberholtzer, “Marketing U.S. Organic Foods,” iii.
3. Dimitri and Oberholtzer, “Marketing U.S. Organic Foods,” 4–5.
4. Dimitri and Oberholtzer, “Marketing U.S. Organic Foods,” 3.
5. Joe Satran, “Organic Agriculture Benefits Revealed in New Long-Term Study from Rodale Institute,” Huffington Post, October 5, 2011, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/06/organic-agriculture-benefits_n_998214.html.
6. Information in this paragraph is from Charlotte Vallaeys, “Busting the ‘Organic is Expensive’ Myth,” Cornucopia Institute, October 23, 2014, http://www.cornucopia.org/2013/10/busting-organic-expensive-myth/.
7. Rodriguez, “Cheap Food,” 128.
8. Not always, as we saw in Phil’s case. His sustainable system requires very little work because he doesn’t spend time haying, administering parasiticides, or feeding during the winter.
9. See the Washington Post’s interactive map for searching zip code data here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/local/2013/11/09/washington-a-world-apart/.
10. Fred Kirschenmann, Steve Stevenson, Fred Buttel, Tom Lyson and Mike Duffy, “Why Worry about the Agriculture of the Middle?” Leopold Center Pubs and Papers 143, 2004, https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/Leopold_pubspapers/, 143.
1. The AFSC is a Quaker organization that implements service, development, and peace programs around the world. The New Mexico branch has other programs in addition to the farmer-to-farmer training program.
2. Bustos is a legend in New Mexico’s organic and sustainable farming movement. He operates a certified organic vegan family farm, one of only a few in the nation, and uses indigenous growing techniques. In January 2014, he was one of a small number of elder organic farmers invited to California for a special conference on the progression of organic farming (the event appeared in the New York Times and the Washington Post.) He was the New Mexico State University Leyendecker Agriculturist of Distinction in 2005, the New Mexico Farmer of the Year in 2006, and the New Mexico Organic Commodity Commission organic farmer of the year in 2011.
3. Wozniak, Irrigation in the Rio Grande Valley, 10. Wozniak notes that some scholars maintain that New Mexican irrigation systems appeared well before 1500, but he’s skeptical of these claims. The bottom line is that ditch irrigation has been practiced in New Mexico for a long time, and today it’s considered a form of traditional agriculture.
4. Information about New Mexico’s current drought and its dust storms is from Laura Paskus, “Muddy Hymnal: New Mexico’s Drying Rivers Herald a Changing World,” Santa Fe Reporter, June 18, 2013, http://www.sfreporter.com/santafe/article-7495-muddy-hymnal.html.
5. Ault et al., “Assessing the Risk of Persistent Drought,” 7529.
6. CSA programs work like this: families purchase shares of the farm’s produce in advance (one box a week, two boxes, etc.), with the farmer determining how many shares he or she can sell each week depending on the size and production of the farm. Some CSA programs deliver the shares to the families; with others, the families go to the farm and pick up the shares. The CSA program I was part of left weekly shares at my neighborhood Whole Foods, where I picked them up.
7. The national average was 14.5 percent in 2013, per the U.S. Census Bureau.
8. “Demographics,” Albuquerque Economic Development, accessed October 5, 2014, http://www.abq.org/Demographics.aspx.
1. Berry, Unsettling of America, 90.
2. “South Valley,” La Entrada Realty, accessed April 30, 2018, http://www.laentradarealty.com/albuquerque-real-estate-areas/south-valley.
3. Land Values: 2014 Summary, USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service, ISSN: 1949–1867, August 2014, http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/usda/nass/AgriLandVa/2010s/2014/AgriLandVa-08-01-2014.pdf, p. 6.
4. Climate Action Plan, City of Albuquerque website, accessed May 12, 2017, https://www.cabq.gov/cap.
5. The others are business, industry and carbon offset; carbon-neutral buildings; clean, renewable energy; complete, livable neighborhoods; recycling and zero waste; social change; and transportation.
1. A word on no-till: No-till farming was developed in the 1960s and is an increasingly used approach to tillage worldwide or, more specifically, the lack thereof. Farmers use specialized seeders to sow through the residue with minimum soil disruption. No-till reduces erosion and increases soil fertility, and it was intended to conserve topsoil that was being rapidly depleted by conventional farming. Those benefits haven’t gone away, but the caveat is that today’s version of no-till is better termed “no-till chemical farming.” Instead of plowing weeds under, farmers use herbicides to control them, which contributes to weed resistance, agrochemical runoff, and higher input costs. Gabe rarely uses herbicide, though, so his execution of no-till farming qualifies as regenerative. Huggins and Reganold, “No-Till,” 71–77.
2. Today Brown’s Ranch would be able to weather a one-year drought without a problem—the soils are so healthy and store so much water that even in dry years, Gabe still produces high-yielding crops and pasture. But in 1997, the soils were still recovering from decades of heavy tillage.
3. Before North Dakota was settled and plowed up, the soil contained approximately 7 percent to 8 percent organic matter, Gabe tells me.
1. The soil information in this paragraph is from Wolfe, Tales from the Underground, 93–94.
2. Wolfe, Tales from the Underground, 94–95.
3. Barber, Third Plate, 86–87.
4. Wolfe, Tales from the Underground, 1.
5. Herbicide kills weeds, whereas fungicides kill plant diseases and pesticides kill bugs. While it’s not an organic practice, Gabe’s use of herbicide every two to three years is pretty impressive because he does not till to control weeds like many organic farmers do. Most conventional corn and soybean farmers spray for weeds before planting, again during the growing season if necessary, and again after harvest.
6. North Dakota is part of America’s drylands, which encompass most of the Great Plains and the West. Drylands are areas in which the growing season is 1 to 179 days, which includes regions classified as arid, semiarid, and dry subhumid. About 40 percent of the world’s land is classified as drylands. Koohafkan and Stewart, Water and Cereals in Drylands, 5–6.
7. Another form of multicropping is strip cropping, or planting long strips of different crops side by side, but in wide enough strips to permit machine harvesting.
8. Barber, Third Plate, 65.
9. Some people would argue that the things I’ve listed as intangible gains are in fact tangible. One can see water infiltrating better, for example. These kinds of benefits are not connected to a monetary value, though, which is why I call them intangible. If industrial farmers can’t see the money made from covers on a balance sheet, then the benefits tend to be intangible and therefore unimportant to them.
10. Barber, Third Plate, 14–15, 430–31.
11. Root exudates are the chemicals exuded by plant roots into the soil. Scientists understand little about roots in general and even less about root exudates, but it is believed that the secreted chemicals help plants regulate the soil microbe community in their immediate vicinity, cope with herbivores, encourage beneficial symbioses, change the chemical and physical properties of the soil, and inhibit the growth of competing plant species. Soil microorganisms consume root exudates, as Gabe points out here when discussing the performance of soil biology in monocultures and polycultures. Walker et al., “Root Exudation and Rhizosphere Biology,” 44.
12. Many of the plants have multiple benefits to the environment. The fusilli, for instance, also helps increase organic matter in the soil. “It has a tremendous root mass,” Gabe says. “Two-thirds of your organic matter increase will come from roots; that’s why we put species like this in here.”
13. Jonathan Lundgren, “Tempering the Bad Reputation of Earth’s Most Abundant Animals,” Tri-State Neighbor, April 21, 2013, http://www.tristateneighbor.com/news/regional/tempering-the-bad-reputation-of-earth-s-most-abundant-animals/article_d62feb22-a85f-11e2-8934-001a4bcf887a.html.
14. Jonathan Lundgren, “Tempering the Bad Reputation.”
15. Buhler, “Introduction to Insecticide Resistance.”
1. Pollan, Omnivore’s Dilemma, 215.
2. A good yield for wheat in eastern Colorado’s dryland climate would be around sixty bushels per acre.
3. A quarter of land is 160 acres. I find it ironic that 160 acres, a quarter, was the exact amount given to homesteaders under the Homestead Act of 1862. Maybe the government wasn’t too far off in its estimation that 160 acres could support a family. Of course, when Gabe says 160 could support a family, he means if it absolutely had to. “In other words if we had to we could,” he clarifies later. “I was trying to get the point across that our 1,400 acres could easily support our two families. My point being that we do not need to buy or rent more land.”
4. This state statistic is somewhat misleading, as is the national average farm size of 434 acres per the 2012 Census of Agriculture. Farms as small as a few acres count toward the total, which brings the average down. In truth, most midwestern grain farms are way over 1,000 acres. United States Department of Agriculture, 2012 Census of Agriculture, volume 1, chapter 1: State Level Data, North Dakota, table 64, “Summary by Size of Farm,” May 2014, https://www.agcensus.usda.gov/Publications/2012/Full_Report/Volume_1,_Chapter_1_State_Level/North_Dakota/st38_1_064_064.pdf.
5. Savory, Holistic Management, 424.
6. Economic gain for farmers is only the beginning. Bringing livestock back to the farm would revitalize sectors of rural economies that once thrived but are now dead. Family-run butcher shops, feed stores, livestock equipment stores, stores to retail the animal products, and jobs in helping farmers manage the animals are just a handful of examples of the effect livestock would have on rural communities.
7. Donald Schwert, “Fargo Geology: Why Is the Red River of the North So Vulnerable to Flooding?” North Dakota State University, first published in 2009, accessed December 15, 2014, http://www.ndsu.edu/fargo_geology/whyflood.htm.
8. “North Dakota Prairie: Our Natural Heritage,” Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center Online, May 5, 1999, http://www.npwrc.usgs.gov/resource/habitat/heritage/.
1. I can’t number the times angry cows have chased my father, usually over birthing- or calf-related intrusions on his part. Even when humans aren’t around, cows go off by themselves to calve, away from the herd.
1. Costello, Prairie World, 63.
2. Barber, Third Plate, 45.
3. “North Dakota Prairie: Our Natural Heritage,” Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center Online, May 5, 1999, http://www.npwrc.usgs.gov/resource/habitat/heritage/.
4. Nickens, “Vanishing Voices,” 24.
5. Hay is best served the winter after its summer harvest, but it can last until the following winter if baled under the right conditions. Too-wet hay will mold, and too-dry hay will become unpalatable. Even properly harvested hay will break down—it is not filled with preservatives after all—and will lose some nutrients. Ranchers call hay from the previous year carry-over hay. They know it’s not the highest-quality feed option, but it will do in a pinch.
6. Even Phil, with all his contiguous land, supplements some hay to the buffalo during the winter using the same bale-grazing method. It’s probably impossible for Great Plains ranches to be entirely hay-free, but they can get very close, as Phil’s and Gabe’s operations are.
7. When he says “feeding hay” here, he means putting the cattle in pastures that contain preplaced bales, not starting the tractor and bringing them hay. He’s talking about the number of days the cows are exposed to hay.
1. Rogler and Lorenz, “Crested Wheatgrass,” 91–93.
2. Roberts and Kallenbach, “Smooth Bromegrass,” 1.
3. National Audubon Society, Audubon’s Birds and Climate Change Report.
4. Nickens, “Vanishing Voices,” 27.
5. Nickens, “Vanishing Voices,” 27.
6. The Chinese ring-necked pheasant, an import from China, is South Dakota’s state bird—oddly fitting in a state where non-native grasses like crested wheatgrass and smooth brome are pushing out native grasses.
7. Barber, Third Plate, 247.
8. Information about Brix readings in this paragraph and the next is from “Brix,” Bionutrient Food Association, accessed November 12, 2014, http://bionutrient.org/bionutrient-rich-food/brix.
9. Barber, Third Plate, 61.
10. We can all test our food if we want to—refractometers are readily available online, easy to use, and not terribly expensive at around $100. My husband bought me one for Christmas, and I’ve been gleefully testing fruits and vegetables since.
11. Insects can actually smell sick plants with their antennae, which detect odor wavelengths emitted from plants. Barber, Third Plate, 54.
12. Not to be confused with the Egg Mobiles at Polyface Farm featured in Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma, which are more like tiny houses on wheels rather than modified livestock trailers.
13. For more on the human costs associated with megaslaughterhouses, see Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation.
14. Here I’m interviewing Gabe in August.
1. Number calculated by taking total number of cows and calves in Perkins County (105,791 per the USDA’s 2012 Census of Agriculture, https://www.agcensus.usda.gov/Publications/2012/Online_Resources/County_Profiles/South_Dakota/cp46105.pdf) divided by the county’s population (2,982 per the 2010 Census—https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/perkinscountysouthdakota/ HEA775216).
2. Barber, Third Plate, 15.
3. The phrase “high on the hog” refers to the costliest cuts of meat from a pig, taken from the back and upper leg. Wealthy people could afford to eat high on the hog, while poor people ate from the lower part, such as the belly, hocks, and feet. Barber, Third Plate, 152–53.
1. Gabe is referring to agricultural tax incentives, some permanent and others temporary. During the 2014 tax year, for example, farmers could write off the cost of new machinery up to $250,000.
2. EQIP (the Environmental Quality Incentives Program) is sponsored by the Natural Resources Conservation Service.
3. Albritton, Let Them Eat Junk, 128–29.
4. Albritton, Let Them Eat Junk, 128–29.
