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A Revolution Down on the Farm: The Transformation of American Agriculture since 1929
At a time when food is becoming increasingly scarce in many parts of the world and food prices are skyrocketing, no industry is more important than agriculture. Humans have been farming for thousands of years, and yet agriculture has undergone more fundamental changes in the past 80 years than in the previous several centuries. In 1900, 30 million American farmers tilled the soil or tended livestock; today there are fewer than 4.5 million farmers who feed a population four times larger than it was at the beginning of the century. Fifty years ago, the planet could not have sustained a population of 6.5 billion; now, commercial and industrial agriculture ensure that millions will not die from starvation. Farmers are able to feed an exponentially growing planet because the greatest industrial revolution in history has occurred in agriculture since 1929, with U.S. farmers leading the way. Productivity on American farms has increased tenfold, even as most small farmers and tenants have been forced to find other work. Today, only 300,000 farms produce approximately ninety percent of the total output, and overproduction, largely subsidized by government programs and policies, has become the hallmark of modern agriculture. A Revolution Down on the Farm: The Transformation of American Agriculture since 1929 charts the profound changes in farming that have occurred during author Paul K. Conkin's lifetime. His personal experiences growing up on a small Tennessee farm complement compelling statistical data as he explores America's vast agricultural transformation and considers its social, political, and economic consequences. He examines the history of American agriculture, showing how New Deal innovations evolved into convoluted commodity programs following World War II. Conkin assesses the skills, new technologies, and government policies that helped transform farming in America and suggests how new legislation might affect farming in decades to come. Although the increased production and mechanization of farming has been an economic success story for Americans, the costs are becoming increasingly apparent. Small farmers are put out of business when they cannot compete with giant, non-diversified corporate farms. Caged chickens and hogs in factory-like facilities or confined dairy cattle require massive amounts of chemicals and hormones ultimately ingested by consumers. Fertilizers, new organic chemicals, manure disposal, and genetically modified seeds have introduced environmental problems that are still being discovered. A Revolution Down on the Farm concludes with an evaluation of farming in the twenty-first century and a distinctive meditation on alternatives to our present large scale, mechanized, subsidized, and fossil fuel and chemically dependent system.
238 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 2008
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186 people want to read
About the author
Paul K. Conkin
29 books4 followersPaul K. Conkin is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History at Vanderbilt University.
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
March 22, 2022
Rarely does a book make such an adept combination of the personal and historical. The author has been a noted historian of American agriculture for decades. Yet he was also born on an actual farm in 1929, and spent his first decades working there, and members of his family like his father and brother-in-law continued farming for decades more. He makes a strong case that American agriculture in the year of his birth was near unchanged from the 19th century, but the farm population finally peaked in the early 1930s (at 35 million and 25% of the workforce; horses were only slightly off their peak of 25 million a few years earlier), and in the years afterwards farms underwent an unprecedented revolution in productivity which led to a decline in farm population but cheaper food for all Americans.
The book is at its best describing the changing technologies that contributed to the farm revolution in the years leading up to his birth. John Deere's addition of a steel "share" to the front of the plow in 1837, and steel moldboards and steel beams afterwards, eventually allowed deeper plowing, as did the disk harrows that followed plowing and took over tillage after the Civil War. On the harvesting side, Cyrus McCormick perfected the reaper in the 1830s, and the binder with twine much later. The "combine" which combined harvesting, binding, threshing, and winnowing, came still later, but these were often too heavy for most soils and had to be pulled by dozens of horses. It was only after the widespread adoption of the tractor (first in the Fordson of 1917, and then the International Harvest Farmall and Allied-Chambers tractors later) that these machines could be pulled and widely used and the horses, which ate up a fourth of all the crop, could be gradually discarded. In the following decades, these tractors and continually improving machines, along with federal farm programs, led agriculture to have the fastest productivity growth of almost any sector from World War II to 1970.
He also describes his small Eastern-Tennesssee community of a few dozen families, often with just a few acres each, who grew tobacco and other crops when he was a kid. Like most farm families at the time, they also had the "big three" farm animals, cows, hogs, and chickens (as many as 78% of farmers even in 1950 kept chickens, and 68% had milk cows, today, even among farmers its just 1% for both), and used things like chicken eggs as their only monetary income for most of the year, or pork for their only meat in the winter months, sharing with other local families who staggered the date of slaughter. He also describes how people in his family, including his father, began working part time in factories in Kingsport (with its Eastman Kodak plant) or Knoxville to supplement their farm income. It was a gradual transition away from farming, not an abrupt stop. But the federal governments allotment program, which promised good prices for just a few acres of tobacco, but which required increasingly little work, led many to keep one foot in the farming world (the author worked as an agent of the program during college, where he calculated the county-based "base acreage" and quotas for different farmers.)
Although sometimes its impossible to follow the twists and turns of federal farm policy (from the 1938 Agricultural Allotment Act to the Farmers Union-based "Brannon Plan" of 1950 to the "Soil Bank" of the Eisenhower administration and so on), the book makes one of the best efforts I've read. It's a marvelous and surprisingly even-handed account, with little romanticism for what he acknowledges was the tough life of the old farmer, but with an abiding love of farm history.
The book is at its best describing the changing technologies that contributed to the farm revolution in the years leading up to his birth. John Deere's addition of a steel "share" to the front of the plow in 1837, and steel moldboards and steel beams afterwards, eventually allowed deeper plowing, as did the disk harrows that followed plowing and took over tillage after the Civil War. On the harvesting side, Cyrus McCormick perfected the reaper in the 1830s, and the binder with twine much later. The "combine" which combined harvesting, binding, threshing, and winnowing, came still later, but these were often too heavy for most soils and had to be pulled by dozens of horses. It was only after the widespread adoption of the tractor (first in the Fordson of 1917, and then the International Harvest Farmall and Allied-Chambers tractors later) that these machines could be pulled and widely used and the horses, which ate up a fourth of all the crop, could be gradually discarded. In the following decades, these tractors and continually improving machines, along with federal farm programs, led agriculture to have the fastest productivity growth of almost any sector from World War II to 1970.
He also describes his small Eastern-Tennesssee community of a few dozen families, often with just a few acres each, who grew tobacco and other crops when he was a kid. Like most farm families at the time, they also had the "big three" farm animals, cows, hogs, and chickens (as many as 78% of farmers even in 1950 kept chickens, and 68% had milk cows, today, even among farmers its just 1% for both), and used things like chicken eggs as their only monetary income for most of the year, or pork for their only meat in the winter months, sharing with other local families who staggered the date of slaughter. He also describes how people in his family, including his father, began working part time in factories in Kingsport (with its Eastman Kodak plant) or Knoxville to supplement their farm income. It was a gradual transition away from farming, not an abrupt stop. But the federal governments allotment program, which promised good prices for just a few acres of tobacco, but which required increasingly little work, led many to keep one foot in the farming world (the author worked as an agent of the program during college, where he calculated the county-based "base acreage" and quotas for different farmers.)
Although sometimes its impossible to follow the twists and turns of federal farm policy (from the 1938 Agricultural Allotment Act to the Farmers Union-based "Brannon Plan" of 1950 to the "Soil Bank" of the Eisenhower administration and so on), the book makes one of the best efforts I've read. It's a marvelous and surprisingly even-handed account, with little romanticism for what he acknowledges was the tough life of the old farmer, but with an abiding love of farm history.
December 6, 2015
Paul Conkin was 80 when he published A Revolution Down on the Farm. He features his own memories and the farming experiences of members of his family, which illustrate a history drawn from statistics and other primary and secondary sources. One of the points Conkin stresses is that the popular notion that agriculture has “declined” in America depends on your point of view. Conkin says, “agriculture has been the most successful sector in the recent economic history of the United States” (x). Technology, but also markets, economic change and government policy decisions, “reduced the number of farm operators needed to produce 89 percent of our agricultural output from around 6 million in the 1930s to less than 350,000 today” (xi). This was a victory from the perspective of economic efficiency, and Conkin seems to think critics of this change haven't focused enough on the benefits of this change. So, what does he think the benefits were, and who benefited?
Conkin's reminiscences of farm life in the first half of the twentieth century don't always seem to match his thesis. He remembers “the pace of farmwork to be leisurely, with rest periods, long lunch breaks, and the slow handling of more routine tasks” (4). At harvest time, he says, work was more strenuous and prolonged. I guess this is inefficient from a particular point of view. In my mind, it depends on what you spend those extra hours doing.
One of the important points Conkin makes in his reminiscences is that as new technology was introduced, its adoption took time. While larger farms may have jumped right in (“By 1860,” he says, reapers were at work on a minority of farms (60,000)” 9), many smaller farms continued using old tools and horse power well into the twentieth century. Resistance to new technology may be too strong a term here -- smaller farmers may simply have been unable to afford a new tractor or combine. It's also possible that smaller operators didn't buy into the the logic of expansion. If you don’t buy the big combine that only makes economic sense on a farm of 1000 acres, you may be able to continue to make ends meet on 250.
Farm life in 1930, Conkin says, “was closer to that of 1830 than 1960,” and he gives some examples from his own experience (49). These passages will be especially valuable to students with no farm experience of their own (note to self, for future classroom use). Conkin’s economic perspective seems to have originated in seeing farmers begin “to buy more food in town and grow less on the farm. For those who did not sell milk,” he says, “it was soon uneconomical to keep a cow” (49). He continues, “After World War II, the efficiency of production in almost every specialized area of agriculture and the efficiencies in the processing and marketing of foods made it cheaper to buy almost any type of food than to grow one’s own.” The fact that this change was enabled by a rapid increase in industrial inputs from off the farm (oil, fertilizers, pesticides, machinery) is not apparent from Conkin’s point of view, nor are the externalities and subsidies associated with many of these inputs. But it's important to note that just as they are not obvious to Conkin, they may have been equally hidden to other people who experienced the change.
Conkin also describes the transition of his boyhood farm community to a rural suburb. Because his home was seventeen miles from three industrial centers, Conkin was able to witness “the gradual development of a single labor market embracing both urban and rural areas, accompanied by a complex array of lifestyle choices” (84). And his family experience reinforced the idea that expensive equipment created a “mandate to grow or die” and to specialize in corn and soybeans (94). But Conkin does not examine any alternatives to individual ownership of all this equipment, despite his professional expertise in historical communitarian movements. A large section of the book describes government farm policies from the New Deal to the present, without actually shedding too much light on the subject.
In 2002, Conkin says, “2,902 dairy farms had more than 500 cows, and almost all had annual sales of more than $1 million. The average herd size for farms with more than $1 million in sales was 1,500 cows. In total, these farms accounted for more than 45 percent of all milk cows in the United States” (96). This trend towards concentration, he says, continues in almost all areas of farming. Labor efficiency has also increased dramatically. In 1900, Conkin says, “it took 147 hours of human labor to grow 100 bushels of wheat. By 1950 this had shrunk to only 14, and by 1990 to only 6...In 1929 it took 85 hours of work to produce 1,000 pounds of broilers; by 1980 it took less than 1 hour.” In this case, his metric of success isn't even overall economic efficiency -- it's strictly labor efficiency. Economic issues such as the corn subsidies that contribute to raising the chickens or the illegal-immigrant status of the people processing the broilers it only took a man-hour to raise are completely absent from his analysis.
Introducing his section on “Critics and Criticisms,” Conkin says, “Everyone has to concede one point: American farmers have achieved a level of efficient food production unprecedented in world history” (164). His frustration that certain malcontents might wish to disagree with that claim seems to animate this section of the book. It doesn’t seem to occur to Conkin that as conditions like energy prices, resource depletion, and the risks associated with new techniques continue to change, the rational economic decision-makers he praises might legitimately need to reconsider practices that have become as traditional for modern farmers as cradling and crop rotation once were for their ancestors.
The word “sustainable...is now so popular, so widely embraced, that it always begs contextual definition,” Conkin says. This is absolutely true, but no more so than many of the concepts that support the agricultural status quo, which Conkin tacitly accepts. Conkin describes several of the leaders of alternative movements, like the Rodales and Wendell Berry, without giving much attention to the substance of their sustainability arguments or the strength of the movements. Only in his afterword does Conkin break free of the boosterism that has propelled him through the book, to argue that food prices need to rise. Farm products should be more expensive, and “the shift to higher costs should be based in large part on the pricing of as many externalities as possible,” he says, and I couldn't agree more.
Conkin seems to realize that something weird has just happened to his argument. “If this seems like a prescription for the types of alternative agriculture described in chapter 8,” he concludes, “so be it” (205). I think it's great that he ends with a call for more accurate cost accounting and greater responsibility for externalities. It's unfortunate that Conkin didn't really see the flaws in the arguments and experiential impressions that led to the present situation, but it's very helpful that he gave us a personal view of where those arguments and impressions came from.
Conkin's reminiscences of farm life in the first half of the twentieth century don't always seem to match his thesis. He remembers “the pace of farmwork to be leisurely, with rest periods, long lunch breaks, and the slow handling of more routine tasks” (4). At harvest time, he says, work was more strenuous and prolonged. I guess this is inefficient from a particular point of view. In my mind, it depends on what you spend those extra hours doing.
One of the important points Conkin makes in his reminiscences is that as new technology was introduced, its adoption took time. While larger farms may have jumped right in (“By 1860,” he says, reapers were at work on a minority of farms (60,000)” 9), many smaller farms continued using old tools and horse power well into the twentieth century. Resistance to new technology may be too strong a term here -- smaller farmers may simply have been unable to afford a new tractor or combine. It's also possible that smaller operators didn't buy into the the logic of expansion. If you don’t buy the big combine that only makes economic sense on a farm of 1000 acres, you may be able to continue to make ends meet on 250.
Farm life in 1930, Conkin says, “was closer to that of 1830 than 1960,” and he gives some examples from his own experience (49). These passages will be especially valuable to students with no farm experience of their own (note to self, for future classroom use). Conkin’s economic perspective seems to have originated in seeing farmers begin “to buy more food in town and grow less on the farm. For those who did not sell milk,” he says, “it was soon uneconomical to keep a cow” (49). He continues, “After World War II, the efficiency of production in almost every specialized area of agriculture and the efficiencies in the processing and marketing of foods made it cheaper to buy almost any type of food than to grow one’s own.” The fact that this change was enabled by a rapid increase in industrial inputs from off the farm (oil, fertilizers, pesticides, machinery) is not apparent from Conkin’s point of view, nor are the externalities and subsidies associated with many of these inputs. But it's important to note that just as they are not obvious to Conkin, they may have been equally hidden to other people who experienced the change.
Conkin also describes the transition of his boyhood farm community to a rural suburb. Because his home was seventeen miles from three industrial centers, Conkin was able to witness “the gradual development of a single labor market embracing both urban and rural areas, accompanied by a complex array of lifestyle choices” (84). And his family experience reinforced the idea that expensive equipment created a “mandate to grow or die” and to specialize in corn and soybeans (94). But Conkin does not examine any alternatives to individual ownership of all this equipment, despite his professional expertise in historical communitarian movements. A large section of the book describes government farm policies from the New Deal to the present, without actually shedding too much light on the subject.
In 2002, Conkin says, “2,902 dairy farms had more than 500 cows, and almost all had annual sales of more than $1 million. The average herd size for farms with more than $1 million in sales was 1,500 cows. In total, these farms accounted for more than 45 percent of all milk cows in the United States” (96). This trend towards concentration, he says, continues in almost all areas of farming. Labor efficiency has also increased dramatically. In 1900, Conkin says, “it took 147 hours of human labor to grow 100 bushels of wheat. By 1950 this had shrunk to only 14, and by 1990 to only 6...In 1929 it took 85 hours of work to produce 1,000 pounds of broilers; by 1980 it took less than 1 hour.” In this case, his metric of success isn't even overall economic efficiency -- it's strictly labor efficiency. Economic issues such as the corn subsidies that contribute to raising the chickens or the illegal-immigrant status of the people processing the broilers it only took a man-hour to raise are completely absent from his analysis.
Introducing his section on “Critics and Criticisms,” Conkin says, “Everyone has to concede one point: American farmers have achieved a level of efficient food production unprecedented in world history” (164). His frustration that certain malcontents might wish to disagree with that claim seems to animate this section of the book. It doesn’t seem to occur to Conkin that as conditions like energy prices, resource depletion, and the risks associated with new techniques continue to change, the rational economic decision-makers he praises might legitimately need to reconsider practices that have become as traditional for modern farmers as cradling and crop rotation once were for their ancestors.
The word “sustainable...is now so popular, so widely embraced, that it always begs contextual definition,” Conkin says. This is absolutely true, but no more so than many of the concepts that support the agricultural status quo, which Conkin tacitly accepts. Conkin describes several of the leaders of alternative movements, like the Rodales and Wendell Berry, without giving much attention to the substance of their sustainability arguments or the strength of the movements. Only in his afterword does Conkin break free of the boosterism that has propelled him through the book, to argue that food prices need to rise. Farm products should be more expensive, and “the shift to higher costs should be based in large part on the pricing of as many externalities as possible,” he says, and I couldn't agree more.
Conkin seems to realize that something weird has just happened to his argument. “If this seems like a prescription for the types of alternative agriculture described in chapter 8,” he concludes, “so be it” (205). I think it's great that he ends with a call for more accurate cost accounting and greater responsibility for externalities. It's unfortunate that Conkin didn't really see the flaws in the arguments and experiential impressions that led to the present situation, but it's very helpful that he gave us a personal view of where those arguments and impressions came from.
November 27, 2020
Agriculture is the most fundamental activity for human life. Fifty years ago, the planet could not have sustained today’s population, thus the author behind A Revolution Down on the Farm provides knowledge of how America revolutionized farming. Paul K. Conkin addresses the changes of agriculture over time in America and describes the new issues that have arisen as a result of this progress. Conkin is a distinguished professor at Vanderbilt University and has written several books pertaining to agriculture and environmental science. Conkin was born in 1929 and grew up on a subsistence farm in Tennessee, working along side his family and has personally witnessed the changes he covers throughout his book. His personal experiences and adequate research complement the data as he explores America’s vast agricultural transformation and considers the social, political, and economic effects. He examines the history of American agriculture, showing how New Deal innovations from the Great Depression evolved into commodity programs following World War II. He assesses how the governmental policies and inventions, such as the tractor, revolutionized farming and harvesting.
Productivity on American farms has escalated dramatically through improved coordination and organization, as well as new technologies that have increased yield. Although the increased production and industrialization of farming has been revolutionizing for Americans, the costs are detrimental to small farms. Conkin emphasizes how family farms cannot compete with the giant, mechanized corporate farms because of the threats from new technologies, fertilizers, organic chemicals, and GMOs. The structure of farms and employment have been greatly impacted by these developments. Later in the book, Conkin examines various types of alternative farming methods, such as organic farming and sustainable farming in order to integrate biodiversity. However, a more responsible, environmentally friendly agriculture would require a larger and more costly food system, and Americans are not able to make the transition because of insufficient funds and politics.
A Revolution Down on the Farm was certainly an enjoyable read and I would recommend the book to anyone interested in the history of American agriculture. The topics within the book were immensely complex and touched on several different subjects regarding social, political, and economic effects. I liked how Conkin incorporated his own memories into the book so that readers can relate to his experiences. I personally liked how Conkin evaluated the environmental impacts from industrialized agriculture and how there are alternative farming practices to lessen the issues that have risen from the mechanized farming practices. This book is a great contribution to environmental studies and has further helped me in my research for sustainable solutions in agriculture.
Productivity on American farms has escalated dramatically through improved coordination and organization, as well as new technologies that have increased yield. Although the increased production and industrialization of farming has been revolutionizing for Americans, the costs are detrimental to small farms. Conkin emphasizes how family farms cannot compete with the giant, mechanized corporate farms because of the threats from new technologies, fertilizers, organic chemicals, and GMOs. The structure of farms and employment have been greatly impacted by these developments. Later in the book, Conkin examines various types of alternative farming methods, such as organic farming and sustainable farming in order to integrate biodiversity. However, a more responsible, environmentally friendly agriculture would require a larger and more costly food system, and Americans are not able to make the transition because of insufficient funds and politics.
A Revolution Down on the Farm was certainly an enjoyable read and I would recommend the book to anyone interested in the history of American agriculture. The topics within the book were immensely complex and touched on several different subjects regarding social, political, and economic effects. I liked how Conkin incorporated his own memories into the book so that readers can relate to his experiences. I personally liked how Conkin evaluated the environmental impacts from industrialized agriculture and how there are alternative farming practices to lessen the issues that have risen from the mechanized farming practices. This book is a great contribution to environmental studies and has further helped me in my research for sustainable solutions in agriculture.
February 11, 2025
Okay, to be honest, the book really wasn't THAT bad, but I have been procrastinating so it felt like SUCH a drag. The first half of the book was way better than the second half. He get yammering about a lot of information that I won't be using in the class this book was assigned for, nor will I bother to remember that information in daily life.
I liked the author. The way he talked about his own personal farm while also giving insight and information about what was going on for all farmers at that current time and as he grew up was good.
I have a really dumb complaint. I have the e-book version of this on my laptop, and the total pages was only 96 instead of like 233 or something. IT TOOK OVER AN HOUR TO READ "TEN" PAGES ON THIS GOD DAMN E-BOOK BRO. I WAS SUPPOSED TO FINISH THIS BOOK LIKE A MONTH AGO OR SOMETHING...
Whatever. It's over now...
I liked the author. The way he talked about his own personal farm while also giving insight and information about what was going on for all farmers at that current time and as he grew up was good.
I have a really dumb complaint. I have the e-book version of this on my laptop, and the total pages was only 96 instead of like 233 or something. IT TOOK OVER AN HOUR TO READ "TEN" PAGES ON THIS GOD DAMN E-BOOK BRO. I WAS SUPPOSED TO FINISH THIS BOOK LIKE A MONTH AGO OR SOMETHING...
Whatever. It's over now...
June 11, 2024
There are about 2 to 3 chapters entirely relating to public policy/economics that I could not comprehend--only someone well reversed in the subject matter would understand. Moreover, the sentences within these chapters were abysmal, akin to high school textbooks with no flow whatsoever.
I did enjoy reading Conkin's personal accounts of farming and how it has changed throughout the past century.
Overall, this was a tedious read. Similar information can be found elsewhere with writing that is easier to grasp.
I did enjoy reading Conkin's personal accounts of farming and how it has changed throughout the past century.
Overall, this was a tedious read. Similar information can be found elsewhere with writing that is easier to grasp.
July 4, 2019
A very good general overview of the development of agriculture in the United States. The author is a historian, not a scientist, but he is also grew up as a farmer and was a spectators in some of the developments he covers. While it falls short in several minor areas, it's ultimately a perfect resource for those wanting to learn about American agriculture (and by extension, the development of what we deem "Modern Agriculture").
March 6, 2025
I really enjoyed the personal experience blended with the farm policy of the time. I wish more people knew books like this existed to encourage understanding of our food system and where we came from.
December 11, 2022
It has some weird racism surrounding Slavery and Indigenous people in general but the agricultural information was helpful
April 17, 2023
A thorough treatise, but by golly the most boring book I've ever read to put me to sleep. I never made it more than a few pages before conking out.
January 1, 2025
overall, an utterly exhaustive review of american agricultural policy after 1930, and analysis as to how this policy facilitated agricultural transformation to meet the demand of an exponentially growing population.
conkin uses an extreme level of detail and injects very little personal opinion into the text. throughout his book, he scatters a few chapters of his own personal experiences of growing up on a farm, connecting the conditions to the policy he reviews in following chapters. conkin summarizes absolutely nothing, instead choosing to exhaustively review even the most inconsequential details. his writing style is mind-numbingly flat. even while talking about his own experiences, this book reads like a textbook, for better or worse, with a complete absence of narrative.
this text is a great review of agricultural policy throughout the past century, but it's extremely boring. i love reading about land policy and economic history but this was still extremely difficult to get through. it was very hard to gather "main ideas" from each chapter because of its level of detail.
conkin uses an extreme level of detail and injects very little personal opinion into the text. throughout his book, he scatters a few chapters of his own personal experiences of growing up on a farm, connecting the conditions to the policy he reviews in following chapters. conkin summarizes absolutely nothing, instead choosing to exhaustively review even the most inconsequential details. his writing style is mind-numbingly flat. even while talking about his own experiences, this book reads like a textbook, for better or worse, with a complete absence of narrative.
this text is a great review of agricultural policy throughout the past century, but it's extremely boring. i love reading about land policy and economic history but this was still extremely difficult to get through. it was very hard to gather "main ideas" from each chapter because of its level of detail.
January 5, 2010
This book was not exactly what I expected. Given the raft of recent books about large factory farming I rather assumed this book would touch the same sorts of issues. It didn't really, and unless you're really into the history of agriculture I wouldn't suggest reading this one. Conkin talks in depth about how and why farming has changed focusing on advances in technology and governmental farm bills. It was hard for me to wrap my head around most of what he was saying. The most interesting parts of the book were when he talked about his own experiences growing up on his family's farm. I'm rating it so low only because it turns out I wasn't really interested in the subject matter. For someone really interested in the subject or doing research in this area I think it would be a good book.
November 24, 2010
Conkin does his research, and combines it with some more readable chapters about how it connects to his own experiences on a farm and in a farming community in Tennessee. He's not a disciple of Pollan or Berry or any of the folks he calls "alternative agriculture." In fact, he doesn't have much good to say about Wendell Berry at all, which is interesting. So he's a nice counterpoint to those folks.
Read
October 2, 2014Good overview of technological advancements within American farming within the last century. However, he took a fairly dogmatic stance towards the use of fossil fuels, fertilizers, pesticides, soil loss and deterioration, watershed dead zones etc. and completely marginalized sustainable movements and techniques to minimize these. His absolute belief in the infinite progress paradigm, so rampant within commercial ag, is a bit much by the end of the book.
February 8, 2013
The author grew up on a farm and his chapters that relate to that time frame are wonderful. I loved reading about farming during the 1920s to 1940s. His writing got a bit dry after that--mostly because he was discussing the farm policies created by the government. Overall, though, this is an interesting history of how farming has been transformed over the years by various factors.
January 11, 2010
The premise is good, but the book devolved into a cranky series of personal anecdotes. Not only were the good old days not so good, but the present is less than desirable and the future is perilous. Conkin runs out of new things to say rather quickly and gives few options or solutions.
July 20, 2016
Seriously boring writing style, but great content for someone who wants a summary of the entire agriculture industry from the last 100 years. Lots of emphasis on how fast the industry changed do to technology disruption (mostly mechanical)
May 22, 2010
Personalized view of changes to American agriculture with insight on causes, from an established expert.
Currently reading
June 2, 2011So far this is a fascinating book. I'll give a more detailed review when I've finished it.
April 15, 2012
Excellent overview of the changing nature of farming and the incredible increases in farm productivity over the past half century plus...
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews