Binghamton University The Open Repository @ Binghamton (The ORB) Graduate Dissertations and Theses Dissertations, Theses and Capstones 5-2018 AGRICULTURAL REVOLUTIONS IN AMERICA’S HEARTLAND: THE CORN BELT AND THE MAKING OF AMERICAN CAPITALISM Benjamin J. Marley Binghamton University--SUNY, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://orb.binghamton.edu/dissertation_and_theses Part of the Sociology Commons Recommended Citation Marley, Benjamin J., "AGRICULTURAL REVOLUTIONS IN AMERICA’S HEARTLAND: THE CORN BELT AND THE MAKING OF AMERICAN CAPITALISM" (2018). Graduate Dissertations and Theses. 86. https://orb.binghamton.edu/dissertation_and_theses/86 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Dissertations, Theses and Capstones at The Open Repository @ Binghamton (The ORB). It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate Dissertations and Theses by an authorized administrator of The Open Repository @ Binghamton (The ORB). For more information, please contact [email protected]. AGRICULTURAL REVOLUTIONS IN AMERICA’S HEARTLAND: THE CORN BELT AND THE MAKING OF AMERICAN CAPITALISM BY BENJAMIN J. MARLEY BA, Syracuse University, 2008 MA, Syracuse University, 2013 MA, Binghamton University, 2014 DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctorate of Philosophy in Sociology in the Graduate School of Binghamton University State University of New York 2018 © Copyright by Benjamin J. Marley 2018 All Rights Reserved Accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology in the Graduate School of Binghamton University State University of New York 2018 April 23, 2018 Jason W. Moore, Chair Department of Sociology, Binghamton University Dale Tomich, Member Department of Sociology, Binghamton University Denis O’Hearn, Member Department of Sociology, Texas A&M University Paul Ciccantell, Outside Examiner Department of Sociology, Western Michigan University iii ABSTRACT The family farm has been the foundation of America’s cheap food model. This research examines how cheap food from the Corn Belt was produced from 1840s to the late twentieth century. It investigates how the interrelationships between family farming, proletarianization-housewifization, and national and world markets configured and reconfigured. Utilizing a world-ecological framework, I argue that Illinois and Iowa, the heart of the Corn Belt, were the epicenter of two successive agricultural revolutions that fundamentally transformed world accumulation and world nature. The analysis is centered on the development of successive agricultural revolutions over the longue durée of capitalism, with the greatest attention on the nineteenth and twentieth century revolutions in the United States. At the core of the dissertation I examine what I call the ‘double dialectic’: the contradictory relationship within the agrarian household and in relation to world markets and world power. The findings of the study are historical and methodological. Historically, the Corn Belt family farm possessed a unique position within the capitalist world-economy, resulting in relative prosperity and long-term stability. Contrary to regional studies of the Corn Belt, the study provides a world- ecological framework for reconstructing the origins, development, and crisis of the Corn Belt family farm and interpreting how the production of nature, the pursuit of power, and capital accumulation constitute its development. iv Acknowledgements If I learned anything from completing this dissertation is that it takes a community of unpaid work to successfully carry our research. I am grateful to the world-ecology working group at Binghamton University, including Jason Moore, Andrew Pragacz, Joshua Eichen, Kushariyaningsih Biediono, Roberto Ortiz, Alvin Camba, and Shehryar Qazi. Regularly meeting for more than year to discuss arguments and ideas aided in the process and my development as a scholar. Appreciation and thanks also goes to Dale Tomich, whom once told me that “historians know everything but don’t know how to think. Sociologists know nothing but know how to think”. I have taken these words to heart as a historical sociologist. I want to thank Denis O’Hearn for supporting my research, teaching, and service to the graduate student body. Paul Ciccantell has been influential to my development as a scholar from day one. Paul your feedback and guidance has been invaluable. I would also like to thank my advisor Jason W. Moore for believing in me as a scholar from the very beginning. Your encouragement to keeping pushing the boundaries of intellectual frontiers has deeply inspired me to commit to life- long learning and teaching. I want to thank my family for their support in caring for my hounds when research, conferencing, and travel was required. Finally, I want to thank Samantha Fox for her amazingness and emotional labor prior to, during, and after the dissertation. I am who I am because of your brilliance and honesty. v Table of Contents List of Tables…………………………………………………………………………………….vii List of Figures…………………………………………………………………………………..viii Introduction America’s Cheap Food Model………………………………………………1 Chapter 2 From the Transition to British Hegemony: Agricultural Revolutions, Proletarianization, and World Accumulation……………………………………………………………………………55 Chapter 3 The Making of the Modern Corn Belt in the First American Agricultural Revolution……………………………………………………………………………….83 Chapter 4 Agrarian Housewifization and the Remaking of Women and Household………………………………………………………………………………175 Chapter 5 The Second Agricultural Revolution……………………………………......223 Chapter 6 Crisis, Renewal, and the Family Farm in the American Corn Belt…………284 Conclusion Looking Back, Looking Forward………………………………………….296 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………300 vi List of Tables Table 1 ……………………………………………………………………………...143 Table 2 ……………………………………………………………………………...144 Table 3 ……………………………………………………………………………...145 Table 4 ……………………………………………………………………………...145 Table 5 ……………………………………………………………………………...160 Table 6 ……………………………………………………………………………...165 Table 7 ……………………………………………………………………………...167 Table 8 ……………………………………………………………………………...169 Table 9 ………………………………………………………………………...........169 Table 10 ……………………………………………………………………………...178 Table 11 ……………………………………………………………………………...187 Table 12 ……………………………………………………………………………...196 Table 13 ……………………………………………………………………………...250 Table 14 ……………………………………………………………………………...271 Table 15 ……………………………………………………………………………...280 Table 16 ……………………………………………………………………………...280 vii List of Figures Figure 1 ………………………………………………………………………………101 Figure 2 ………………………………………………………………………………112 Figure 3 ………………………………………………………………………………113 Figure 4 ………………………………………………………………………………146 Figure 5 ………………………………………………………………………………147 Figure 6 ………………………………………………………………………………153 Figure 7 ………………………………………………………………………………194 Figure 8 ………………………………………………………………………………195 Figure 9 ……………………………………………………………………………....196 Figure 10 ………………………………………………………………………………200 Figure 11 ……………………………………………………………………………....201 Figure 12 ………………………………………………………………………………207 viii Introduction: America’s Cheap Food Model If the modern world was paved with cheap food, as Moore (2010, 2015) claims, how did that process unfold in the United States in the world-system? The following study examines the origins, development, and crisis of the family farm in the American Midwest to explain the role of cheap food in the world-system. production of cheap food over the longue durée of American capitalism in the world-system. I argue from a world- ecological perspective that Illinois and Iowa, the heart of the Corn Belt, were the epicenter of two successive agricultural revolutions that fundamentally transformed world accumulation and world nature. Illinois and Iowa’s unique position in the capitalist world-ecology provided stability and relative prosperity to farm families while producing cheap food. The study makes clear that machines were not the sole source of cheap food. Instead, cheap food understood here emerged through interrelationships between the farm enterprise and household, proletarianization-housewifization, and finally, world-systemic cycles of accumulation. The following study asks, what are the forces and conditions that give rise to successive agricultural revolutions? What is the relation between agricultural revolutions and capitalist crises? Finally, how do agricultural revolutions reshape the world-system? The historical reconstruction the nineteenth and twentieth century United States agricultural revolutions focuses on two interrelated developments. The first is world accumulation in the context of the core. For example, as will be argued in chapter two, Britain’s developmental crisis was pivotal to the emergence of the United States first 1 agricultural revolution. The second is the contradictory farm relations existing primarily with the farm family itself. The conflicting demands of work for farm men and women, and their interests, became a limit and opportunity to capital accumulation. From a world- ecological perspective, I theorize and historicize the unique position of the Corn Belt family farm in relation to world accumulation and world nature. While the global law of value operates through time and across space as a central force constituting different social formations, those social formations possess their own logic, tendencies, and demands that reproduce in relation to the law of value. As a socio-ecological formation, the family farm has reproduced