Agriculture in the Age of Ecology, 1935-1985 Randal Scott Beeman Iowa State University
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Iowa State University Capstones, Theses and Retrospective Theses and Dissertations Dissertations 1995 "A green and permanent land": agriculture in the age of ecology, 1935-1985 Randal Scott Beeman Iowa State University Follow this and additional works at: https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/rtd Part of the Agricultural Economics Commons, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Commons, Economic History Commons, Environmental Sciences Commons, and the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine Commons Recommended Citation Beeman, Randal Scott, ""A green and permanent land": agriculture in the age of ecology, 1935-1985 " (1995). Retrospective Theses and Dissertations. 10880. https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/rtd/10880 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Iowa State University Capstones, Theses and Dissertations at Iowa State University Digital Repository. 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Ml 48106-1346 USA 313,'761-4700 800.'521-0600 "A green and permanent land"; Agriculture in the age of ecology, 1935-1985 by Randal Scott Beeman A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department: History Major: Agricultural History and Rural Studies Approved: Signature was redacted for privacy. Signature was redacted for privacy. For the ®4ajor De^rtment Signature was redacted for privacy. For the Graduate College lov/a State University Ames, Iowa OMI Number: 9531716 DMI Microform 9531716 Copyright 1995, by OMI Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. UMI 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, MI 48103 ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iii INTRODUCTION 1 PART I PERMANENT AGRICULTURE, 193 5-1960 16 CHAPTER ONE: SOIL AND THE CRISIS OF AMERICAN CIVILIZATION 17 CHAPTER TWO: A PLANNED AND PERMANENT AGRICULITJRE 46 CHAPTER THREE: AN ECOLOGICAL BASIS FOR CULTURE AND AGRICULTURE 66 CHAPTER FOUR: THE SYSTEMS AND BENEFITS OF PERMANENT AGRICULTURE 93 CHAPTER FIVE: INTO THE ARENA: THE PUBLIC LIFE OF PERMANENT AGRICULTURE 123 PART II SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE, 1960-1985 168 CHAPTER SIX: SOIL AND CRISIS OF HUMANITY 172 CHAPTER SEVEN: AGRICULTURE AND THE NEW HOLISM 193 CHAPTER EIGHT: THE MODELS AND METHODS OF SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE 219 CHAPTER NINE: BACK IN THE ARENA: THE PUBLIC LIFE OF SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE 248 BIBLIOGRAPHY 307 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The opportunity to conduct this study would have been impossible without the gracious material and emotional support of my parents, Keith and Janet Beeman of Manhattan, Kansas, My wife, Monica Quirarte-Beeman, and my sons Augustine and Everett provided the incentive to work hard, and the love to make it through long days and nights of research, study and writing. I am also grateful to our families, who have been supportive in so many ways, especially Suzanna and Gerald Cierpiot, of Kansas City, Missouri, On the professional level I wish to extend my sincere gratitude to my major professor, R. Douglas Hurt, who afforded me the opportunity to join the Agricultural History and Rural Studies Program at Iowa State University, and who provided a stalwart example of professionalism, hard work, and honest scholarship. I would also like to thank Professor Alan I Marcus, director of the Histoiy of Technology and Science Program at Iowa State, for numerous "reality checks" and for fostering my innate respect for the art of history, I would also like to thank Professor George McJimsey, Chair of the Department of History at ISU, for allowing me to express some of these ideas in the classroom, and other members of my committee for their work on my behalf, including Professors James Whitaker, Adrian Bennett, and Gail Evans, and Professor Emeritus of Political Science, Don Hadwiger. I would also like to thank Carole Kennedy, secretary extraordinaire, of the ISU Department of History, and fellow graduate students Bruce Homman, Kenneth Cox, David Harmon, Alison Phillips Kovac, and Robinson Yost for their friendship and support. Several organizations contributed financial support to this work, including the Garst Family Foundation, who generously sponsored a fellowship semester to allow for iv the completion of this dissertation. I'he Franklin D. Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute, the Harry S Truman Libraiy Institute, and the Moody Foundation all provided travel grants to support archival research at the Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S Truman and Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Libraries respectively. I wish to thank the talented staffs of these libraries for their patience and resourcefulness, as well as Betty Erickson, Becky Jordan and other staff of the Parks Memorial Library, Iowa State University. Generous support for presenting the initial results of this research came from the Iowa State University Department of History, Graduate College, and Government of the Student Body, as well as the Society for the History of Technology and the Agricultural History Society. The author would like to thank Hal Rothman, editor of Environmental History Review, and anonymous reviewers, for allowing some the early results of work to appear in that august journal. I am also indebted to the editors and reviewers at the Journal of Sustainable Agriculture, and the Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics for publishing my material. Final thanks go to fellow scholars who have listened to and commented on my work at professional meetings, including the American Society for Environmental Histoiy, the Society for the History of Technology, the Agricultural IBstory Society, the Western Social Science Association, and the Southwestern Social Science Association. 1 INTRODUCTION "The genuine pain that keeps everything awake is a tiny, infinite bum on the innocent eyes of other systems." - Federico Garcia Lorca' "Now I am terrified at the Earth, it is that calm and patient It grows such sweet things out of such corruptions ... ." - Walt Whitman^ In the American Midwest, that fabled "breadbasket of the world," persistent rains in the summer of 1993 brought catastrophic floods that drenched the vast agricultural lands of the Mississippi Valley. As floodwaters buried the usually verdant fields underneath lakes of murky water, environmentalists, agriculturists and social critics began to ask why yet another "500 year" flood had ravaged the nation's heartland. While these observers agreed that an unusual climatic pattern precipitated the flooding, critics of past land and water management policies also cited human contributions in exacerbating the Great Flood of 1993. Assailing what they perceived to be the heavy-handed technology and misguided cultural values and political policies that over decades attempted to control the Mississippi and its sprawling tributaries, scientists, policy makers, societal commentators, environmental activists, and ordinary citizens decried the environmental results of "managing" the mighty river system. Antagonists of the Corps of Engineers' ambitious flood control projects lamented the fact that these river control systems had failed to take 2 into account the overall interrelationships bet., cen flood diversion and the ecological sanctity of the waters and the land that surrounds them, Though the dikes, levies, and dams effectively impounded and diverted water and promoted year-long river traffic, as well as protected fertile farms in river valleys, the manifold flood control projects also had caused a virtual "channelization" of the basin. This manipulation of the waters damaged ecologically vital wetlands, river ecosystems, and the general ecological health of the rivers and the biotic communities that surround them. Furthermore, according to challengers of past water management, the flood control plan worked at odds vwth itself, with upstream flood diversion projects actually increasing the incidence of flooding down the river. Critics of the flood