The Land Was Everything: Letters from an American Farmer

by Victor Davis Hanson, Jane Smiley (Foreword)

What does the imminent death of the family farm mean to the average American? A great deal, declares Hanson, who as both a farmer and a classics professor (California State University-Fresno) imbues this provocative, eloquent polemic with personal experience plus an unshakeable agrarian vision that harks back to Greece, Rome and the early American republic. Agribusiness, says Hanson, has obliterated the rural culture that once was the matrix of American society. The superabundance bestowed by corporate mega-farms, he adds, comes at a price: factory farms, propped up by mostly hidden government support and dependent on toxic pesticides and fertilizers, pollute the air, water and soil as they turn out bland, tasteless produce for a voracious, rootless and soulless consumerist society. Hanson (Fields Without Dreams) is totally unsentimental about small-scale independent farming; far from being tranquil, bucolic and simple, he reports, it is a brutal, dirty, maddening, messy, always difficult, sometimes deadly pursuit. Yet family farming, he insists, cultivates bedrock values -- reliance on self and family, distrust of complexity and bureaucracy, skepticism of taxation, willingness to stand up to evil (whether the enemy be insects, weeds or monopolistic landowners) -- values that are integral to a resilient, egalitarian democracy but that he believes are now in short supply. Hanson models these impassioned essays on Crevecoeur's 1782 classic Letters from an American Farmer and sprinkles his barbed critique of contemporary American culture with allusions to Virgil, Pericles, Pindar, Euripides and Thucydides. Even if readers don't plan to go back to nature, his feisty, curmudgeonly,challenging, ruminative essays provide much food for thought.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, History, Agriculture

258 pages, Hardcover

First published April 20, 2000

About the author

Victor Davis Hanson was educated at the University of California, Santa Cruz (BA, Classics, 1975), the American School of Classical Studies (1978-79) and received his Ph.D. in Classics from Stanford University in 1980. He lives and works with his family on their forty-acre tree and vine farm near Selma, California, where he was born in 1953.

Reviews

[Colin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pretty much anything by Victor Davis Hanson is worth reading. I re-read this book in August and September of 2011. A fascinating look at the growth of agribusiness and the demise of family farming, from the perspective of Classicist and farmer Victor Davis Hanson.

[Yash Holbrook · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked this thought-provoking book and hated it at the same time. On the plus side, I will never look at another grape, raisin, peach or plum again without thinking of everything that's gone into getting it to my table, and who profited from it and who did not (the farmer). I will never enter a bucolic, pastoral landscape again without thinking of the muscle, sweat and failure that go into to making and tending those fields, creating an attractive perspective for the non-farming tourist but representing muscle, sweat, and bank loans that will drown the enterprise in the end. I appreciate his characterization of cultivation as a bridge between beautiful but useless (to humans) and chaotic nature and soulless but ordered civilization. Nature is tamed, not conquered, for the benefit of the many humans the farmer reaches. He makes a show of insisting (convincingly) that the life is hard and hopeless, that the farmer (even the "yeoman" farmer) is killing the land for future generations, knows it, and won't stop because it's a constant battle to "bring food from this earth."

And yet, Hanson's many self-contradictions make it hard to get on board. Start with the contradiction of being a classics scholar, quoting liberally to the point of name-dropping ancients his readers ought either to know or be impressed by him for quoting, while also fulsomely denigrating higher education. Born and raised proudly in Selma CA, he tosses in nonchalantly the sights and wisdom he brings back from trips to Greece. His fetishization of the crude, rude, anti-intellectual, curmudgeonly agrarian who loses limbs, land, family and living borders on fantasy for a better, bygone world.

I would consider this a must-read for anyone interested in where America's food comes from, how it gets to your table, and the type of person we're losing to factory farming. Again, love it and hate it.

[Lloyd Fassett]

11/16/25 found it browsing at Dudleys in Bend

[Nate · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting stuff form a owner/operator of a family farm located in California's central valley. A little overly cranky at times but seemed mostly fair and believable like an experienced older man just telling you how it is, with analogies from ancient Greece thrown in. Mainly appreciated hearing an advocate for the family farm that was more Jefferson and less dirty hippie.

[Ammon]

I'm trying to explore Georgics. This was my first exposure to Goergic literature and I'm impressed by some of it, but I hate a lot of what this author has to say so far.

He seems to believe that there is inherent value in farming and that there is something inherently wrong with not owning your own land and using it for your subsistance.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this for an independent project for one of my classes. I love Hanson's premises-- what are we losing, when our culture loses small farmers? While I enjoy academic essays, this was heavy at times and terribly hard to get through.

[Esther]

This book was an honest read and very enjoyable.

[Marti · Rating 2 out of 5]

Still prefer fiction, but this was interesting & good for harvest time.