The Land Remains: A Midwestern Perspective on Our Past and Future

by Neil D. Hamilton

Humankind enjoyed stunning population growth in the 20th and early 21st centuries, largely sustained by pioneering agricultural techniques that fed billions of people around the world. However, as Neil D. Hamilton writes in The Land Remains, a monomaniacal focus on agricultural production growth has obscured proper reverence for the conditions that make growing things possible at all.

Hamilton (The Legal Guide for Direct Farm Marketing) is an agricultural lawyer, conservationist and family farmer. He combines impressive conceptual and firsthand expertise with formidable research and testimonies to argue that the United States must transform its approach to farming and land stewardship if it is to continue to reap the great bounty of its fertile land. Though haunting images in stories like John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath once imposed a proper respect for the land's weaknesses, the cultural memory of them--and the visionary leaders such traumas gave rise to--have faded. Today, far too much U.S. agricultural practice ignores techniques that are necessary to ensure that the land, and those who depend on it, can survive.

Hamilton writes with serious purpose but also a joyful heart. He is deeply familiar with farming, farmers and the vast constellation of corporations, interest groups and institutions that seek to feed the world but also, in many cases, maximize their profits. While fair-minded and compassionate, his writing is unsullied with false equivocation or feeble bromides about the supposed costs of doing business. The Land Remains is sobering and, at times, frightening, but it offers the inspiration of hopeful wisdom. --Walker Minot, teacher, freelance writer and reviewer

Genres: Nature

344 pages, Paperback

Published April 1, 2022

Reviews

[Judy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having lived in Iowa for many years, I was familiar with a lot of the themes Hamilton discusses, but I definitely enjoyed his way of putting them together, pariticularly his perspectives of farmer, academic and lawyer. I enjoyed the idea of having "the back forty" as a narrator. I could have appreciated a bit more proofreading and a bit less of "I'll talk about this in Chapter X," but when I finished the book I was glad I had read it.

[Stephanie Fuhr · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a nice addition to the writings on soils, conservation, and agriculture. Legal loopholes in the Clean Water Act and other complications of law were addressed with specific examples in Iowa. Those were great to have framed by an author spending his whole professional career in the arena. The pacing, the voice, and the selected thoughts from the classics in this genre made the book pleasant amidst some of the harder truths in the data and outlook.

[Karen Trotter · Rating 4 out of 5]

The ideas are thought-provoking. The politics is painfully pro-Democratic, considering the re-election of Trump. The copy-editing is terrible, but I might have given up if I were the author’s copy editor myself. However, as an almost-life-long Iowan who is interested in the issues of climate change, land ethics, and farm history, I am glad to have read it.

[Diane Thayer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this in combination with a class lead by the author, Neil Hamilton. SO informative!

[Annina Rupe · Rating 2 out of 5]

A poorly-written book on such an important topic. A thorough editing is needed, structure-wise and general grammar.
I was so excited to start but am even more excited I'm done.