Emily Pawley
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780226693835
- eISBN:
- 9780226693972
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226693972.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, Environmental History
The introduction begins by exploring the culture of ‘agricultural giants,’ enormous, precisely-measured animals and plants. These giants were products of a massive, transatlantic culture of ...
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The introduction begins by exploring the culture of ‘agricultural giants,’ enormous, precisely-measured animals and plants. These giants were products of a massive, transatlantic culture of knowledge-making: “agricultural improvement.” The introduction traces improvement’s origins in Great Britain and its adoption by wealthy landholders in the U.S. as well as by colonial officials throughout the British Empire. It asserts the centrality of New York State to U.S. improvement, and outlines New Yorkers’ experience of rapid agricultural change in the decades after the opening of the Erie Canal. It describes improvements’ shift from an instrument of landlords’ developmentalism to a much broader community and set of practices. It points to the role of new commercial networks in this expansion, and shows how improving science increasingly created knowledge about goods. Finally the chapter sketches the features of improving science—its focus on the futures that its adherents hoped to create and saw as natural, its dependence on financially-interested experts, its borrowing of forms of credibility from the broader U.S. economy, and its profound questions about the nature of value. In improvement, science did not provide stability, but rather fueled competing stories of the future and volatile and uncertain systems of value.Less
The introduction begins by exploring the culture of ‘agricultural giants,’ enormous, precisely-measured animals and plants. These giants were products of a massive, transatlantic culture of knowledge-making: “agricultural improvement.” The introduction traces improvement’s origins in Great Britain and its adoption by wealthy landholders in the U.S. as well as by colonial officials throughout the British Empire. It asserts the centrality of New York State to U.S. improvement, and outlines New Yorkers’ experience of rapid agricultural change in the decades after the opening of the Erie Canal. It describes improvements’ shift from an instrument of landlords’ developmentalism to a much broader community and set of practices. It points to the role of new commercial networks in this expansion, and shows how improving science increasingly created knowledge about goods. Finally the chapter sketches the features of improving science—its focus on the futures that its adherents hoped to create and saw as natural, its dependence on financially-interested experts, its borrowing of forms of credibility from the broader U.S. economy, and its profound questions about the nature of value. In improvement, science did not provide stability, but rather fueled competing stories of the future and volatile and uncertain systems of value.
Monica M. White
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781469643694
- eISBN:
- 9781469643717
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469643694.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
In the late 1960s, internationally renowned activist Fannie Lou Hamer purchased forty acres of land in the Mississippi Delta, launching the Freedom Farms Cooperative (FFC). A community-based rural ...
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In the late 1960s, internationally renowned activist Fannie Lou Hamer purchased forty acres of land in the Mississippi Delta, launching the Freedom Farms Cooperative (FFC). A community-based rural and economic development project, FFC would grow to over 600 acres, offering a means for local sharecroppers, tenant farmers, and domestic workers to pursue community wellness, self-reliance, and political resistance. Life on the cooperative farm presented an alternative to the second wave of northern migration by African Americans--an opportunity to stay in the South, live off the land, and create a healthy community based upon building an alternative food system as a cooperative and collective effort. Freedom Farmers expands the historical narrative of the black freedom struggle to embrace the work, roles, and contributions of southern black farmers and the organizations they formed. Whereas existing scholarship generally views agriculture as a site of oppression and exploitation of black people, this book reveals agriculture as a site of resistance and provides a historical foundation that adds meaning and context to current conversations around the resurgence of food justice/sovereignty movements in urban spaces like Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee, New York City, and New Orleans.Less
In the late 1960s, internationally renowned activist Fannie Lou Hamer purchased forty acres of land in the Mississippi Delta, launching the Freedom Farms Cooperative (FFC). A community-based rural and economic development project, FFC would grow to over 600 acres, offering a means for local sharecroppers, tenant farmers, and domestic workers to pursue community wellness, self-reliance, and political resistance. Life on the cooperative farm presented an alternative to the second wave of northern migration by African Americans--an opportunity to stay in the South, live off the land, and create a healthy community based upon building an alternative food system as a cooperative and collective effort. Freedom Farmers expands the historical narrative of the black freedom struggle to embrace the work, roles, and contributions of southern black farmers and the organizations they formed. Whereas existing scholarship generally views agriculture as a site of oppression and exploitation of black people, this book reveals agriculture as a site of resistance and provides a historical foundation that adds meaning and context to current conversations around the resurgence of food justice/sovereignty movements in urban spaces like Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee, New York City, and New Orleans.
Emily Pawley
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780226693835
- eISBN:
- 9780226693972
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226693972.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, Environmental History
Chapter 1 examines the first phase of improvement in New York: a project of New York’s class of large landlords and developers. It argues that, far from longing for a lost feudalism, landlords ...
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Chapter 1 examines the first phase of improvement in New York: a project of New York’s class of large landlords and developers. It argues that, far from longing for a lost feudalism, landlords aspired to the status of British aristocratic agricultural modernizers whose status had been expanding across the 18th and into the early 19th century. The chapter traces New York landlords’ involvement in improvement, showing how they established new institutions of agricultural science, commissioning geological surveys, as part of a broader developmental move into seized Haudenosaunee lands. It then shows how, just as the institutions they had established took off, major landlords’ power collapsed in the face of failed speculations and tenant resistance in the Anti-Rent War. Radical tenants, participating in a tradition of British agrarian radicalism, used agricultural fairs as political opportunities and took up improving arguments in their own defense, breaking landlords’ hold over improving institutions.Less
Chapter 1 examines the first phase of improvement in New York: a project of New York’s class of large landlords and developers. It argues that, far from longing for a lost feudalism, landlords aspired to the status of British aristocratic agricultural modernizers whose status had been expanding across the 18th and into the early 19th century. The chapter traces New York landlords’ involvement in improvement, showing how they established new institutions of agricultural science, commissioning geological surveys, as part of a broader developmental move into seized Haudenosaunee lands. It then shows how, just as the institutions they had established took off, major landlords’ power collapsed in the face of failed speculations and tenant resistance in the Anti-Rent War. Radical tenants, participating in a tradition of British agrarian radicalism, used agricultural fairs as political opportunities and took up improving arguments in their own defense, breaking landlords’ hold over improving institutions.
Emily Pawley
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780226693835
- eISBN:
- 9780226693972
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226693972.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, Environmental History
Chapter 2 turns to the much broader world of improvement that emerged during the Panic of 1837 and Anti-Rent War as new journals and agricultural societies attracted a broader wave of adherents. The ...
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Chapter 2 turns to the much broader world of improvement that emerged during the Panic of 1837 and Anti-Rent War as new journals and agricultural societies attracted a broader wave of adherents. The chapter challenges the idea that rural New York was split between elite and “ordinary” or “real” farmers. Instead New York had a complex rural hierarchy, within which many groups competed for the status of “real farmer” even as the definition of authenticity shifted. Improving institutions acted as stages upon which these claims to identity could be performed. Thus, wealthy urbanites attempted to occupy the cultural position of old landlords as they shifted into politics; they purchased improving goods as a form of conspicuous consumption and a demonstration of creditworthiness; and they sought further wealth through rural speculations. Middling farmers, a broad and varied group, used improvement and improving consumption to demonstrate rural refinement and obtain access to credit while also performing “conspicuous production,” visible acts of physical labor that asserted their claim to producerist authenticity. Finally, the chapter suggests that as some identities were publicized in improvement, others were hidden, particularly the labor and thought of paid and family laborers, an idea further addressed in Chapter 3.Less
Chapter 2 turns to the much broader world of improvement that emerged during the Panic of 1837 and Anti-Rent War as new journals and agricultural societies attracted a broader wave of adherents. The chapter challenges the idea that rural New York was split between elite and “ordinary” or “real” farmers. Instead New York had a complex rural hierarchy, within which many groups competed for the status of “real farmer” even as the definition of authenticity shifted. Improving institutions acted as stages upon which these claims to identity could be performed. Thus, wealthy urbanites attempted to occupy the cultural position of old landlords as they shifted into politics; they purchased improving goods as a form of conspicuous consumption and a demonstration of creditworthiness; and they sought further wealth through rural speculations. Middling farmers, a broad and varied group, used improvement and improving consumption to demonstrate rural refinement and obtain access to credit while also performing “conspicuous production,” visible acts of physical labor that asserted their claim to producerist authenticity. Finally, the chapter suggests that as some identities were publicized in improvement, others were hidden, particularly the labor and thought of paid and family laborers, an idea further addressed in Chapter 3.
Ashley Jackson
- Published in print:
- 1999
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198207641
- eISBN:
- 9780191677762
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198207641.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, World Modern History
This book is a full study of an African country during the Second World War. Unusually, it provides both an Africanist and an imperial perspective. Using extensive archival and oral evidence, the ...
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This book is a full study of an African country during the Second World War. Unusually, it provides both an Africanist and an imperial perspective. Using extensive archival and oral evidence, the author explores the social, economic, political, agricultural, and military history of Botswana. He examines Botswana's military contribution to the war effort and the impact of the war on the African home front. The book focuses on events and personalities ‘on the ground’ in Africa, and also on their interaction with and impact upon events and personalities in distant imperial centres, such as Whitehall and the wartime British Army headquarters in the Middle East. The attitudes, aims, and actions of all levels of colonial society – British rulers, African chiefs, military officials, ordinary African men and women – are considered, producing a ‘total history’ of an African country at war.Less
This book is a full study of an African country during the Second World War. Unusually, it provides both an Africanist and an imperial perspective. Using extensive archival and oral evidence, the author explores the social, economic, political, agricultural, and military history of Botswana. He examines Botswana's military contribution to the war effort and the impact of the war on the African home front. The book focuses on events and personalities ‘on the ground’ in Africa, and also on their interaction with and impact upon events and personalities in distant imperial centres, such as Whitehall and the wartime British Army headquarters in the Middle East. The attitudes, aims, and actions of all levels of colonial society – British rulers, African chiefs, military officials, ordinary African men and women – are considered, producing a ‘total history’ of an African country at war.
Ian Miller
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780719088865
- eISBN:
- 9781781706909
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719088865.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History
The immediate post-Famine period was marked by profound optimism about the potential of Irish agricultural development. For some improvers, agricultural practice offered a fertile ground upon which ...
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The immediate post-Famine period was marked by profound optimism about the potential of Irish agricultural development. For some improvers, agricultural practice offered a fertile ground upon which to plant the seeds of modernisation to facilitate fuller Irish integration into an international capitalist market economy. This chapter suggests that post-Famine agriculturists promoted new understandings of how to productively harness biological agro-material found on Irish farms during and after the Famine. It examines post-Famine scientific readings of the biology and physiology of crops, plants and animals and their subsequent promotion as an aid to Irish food production. In the 1850s, agricultural science was institutionalised via a state-supported network of agricultural schools and model farms aimed at all social classes. Ultimately, however, small farmers exhibited resistance and apathy towards these educational schemes for an assortment of social, political and practical reasons, a factor that restricted the socio-economic effectiveness of agricultural schools. By exploring these themes, this chapter reveals further connections made between food and national improvement while demonstrating that food production, as with consumption, evolved into a site of deep contestation between different Irish social groups and, sometimes, between colonising and colonised powers.Less
The immediate post-Famine period was marked by profound optimism about the potential of Irish agricultural development. For some improvers, agricultural practice offered a fertile ground upon which to plant the seeds of modernisation to facilitate fuller Irish integration into an international capitalist market economy. This chapter suggests that post-Famine agriculturists promoted new understandings of how to productively harness biological agro-material found on Irish farms during and after the Famine. It examines post-Famine scientific readings of the biology and physiology of crops, plants and animals and their subsequent promotion as an aid to Irish food production. In the 1850s, agricultural science was institutionalised via a state-supported network of agricultural schools and model farms aimed at all social classes. Ultimately, however, small farmers exhibited resistance and apathy towards these educational schemes for an assortment of social, political and practical reasons, a factor that restricted the socio-economic effectiveness of agricultural schools. By exploring these themes, this chapter reveals further connections made between food and national improvement while demonstrating that food production, as with consumption, evolved into a site of deep contestation between different Irish social groups and, sometimes, between colonising and colonised powers.
Ian Miller
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780719088865
- eISBN:
- 9781781706909
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719088865.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History
By 1900, it seemed to many contemporaries that post-Famine Ireland was in an unremitting condition of physical, social and economic decline. Ireland's food economy remained hindered by an inability ...
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By 1900, it seemed to many contemporaries that post-Famine Ireland was in an unremitting condition of physical, social and economic decline. Ireland's food economy remained hindered by an inability to modernise while the poor seemed chronically underfed. This chapter argues that turn-of-the-century educational reformers harnessed the Irish education system to ensure that teachers offered practical agricultural and domestic training, a step taken to address and resolve pressing post-Famine food concerns. Their intervention formed part of an ambitious social reform that promised to lay the foundations of a stable, prosperous Irish society. This chapter explores the reconfiguration of Irish agricultural and domestic education in 1900 and identifies the motivations that underpinned this radical overhaul. Reformers advocated adjustment in both agricultural and domestic instruction as they saw these as complementary and mutually reinforcing elements of the broader project of improving the nation. This mindset allowed reformers to focus on, and attempt to intervene in, two key decaying sites: the agricultural workplace and the home.Less
By 1900, it seemed to many contemporaries that post-Famine Ireland was in an unremitting condition of physical, social and economic decline. Ireland's food economy remained hindered by an inability to modernise while the poor seemed chronically underfed. This chapter argues that turn-of-the-century educational reformers harnessed the Irish education system to ensure that teachers offered practical agricultural and domestic training, a step taken to address and resolve pressing post-Famine food concerns. Their intervention formed part of an ambitious social reform that promised to lay the foundations of a stable, prosperous Irish society. This chapter explores the reconfiguration of Irish agricultural and domestic education in 1900 and identifies the motivations that underpinned this radical overhaul. Reformers advocated adjustment in both agricultural and domestic instruction as they saw these as complementary and mutually reinforcing elements of the broader project of improving the nation. This mindset allowed reformers to focus on, and attempt to intervene in, two key decaying sites: the agricultural workplace and the home.
Curtis Marez
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780816672318
- eISBN:
- 9781452954288
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816672318.003.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Media Studies
The introduction analyzes the competing visual cultures of agribusiness futurism and farm worker futurism in order to theorize what I call campesino modernity, a social formation based in the ...
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The introduction analyzes the competing visual cultures of agribusiness futurism and farm worker futurism in order to theorize what I call campesino modernity, a social formation based in the appropriation of visual technology to project alternate futures or even the possibility of the future as such for the poor and marginalized.Less
The introduction analyzes the competing visual cultures of agribusiness futurism and farm worker futurism in order to theorize what I call campesino modernity, a social formation based in the appropriation of visual technology to project alternate futures or even the possibility of the future as such for the poor and marginalized.
Peter A. Kopp
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780520277472
- eISBN:
- 9780520965058
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520277472.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
In the first half of the twentieth century, Oregon’s Willamette Valley became one of largest hop producers in the world. Hops, whose cones flavor and preserve beer, were a relatively new addition to ...
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In the first half of the twentieth century, Oregon’s Willamette Valley became one of largest hop producers in the world. Hops, whose cones flavor and preserve beer, were a relatively new addition to the agricultural landscape. Farmers first planted the crop in small acreages shortly after the Civil War to meet the needs of local brewers; then, after bountiful yields, quickly expanded their enterprise after finding ideal environmental conditions and viable transportation networks to reach larger markets. In the late nineteenth century, regional promoters claimed that farmers had caught “hop fever” and others suggested that the Willamette Valley was a “virtual garden spot” for hop cultivation. Upon this foundation and vast connections with people and goods from around the globe, the hop industry continued to expand, with farmers claiming the title “Hop Center of the World” by the early 1900s. Despite world wars, Prohibition, and the introduction of botanical pests and diseases, success has lasted to the present. In the past thirty years, the valley’s hop industry, aided by horticultural scientists, played a vital role in the craft beer revolution, because growers produced the hop varieties used to make distinctive beers. By making hops the central character in a wide-reaching history, this book aims to connect readers with their agricultural origins of the beers they drink and offer an enhanced sense of place for Portland and Oregon’s Willamette Valley.Less
In the first half of the twentieth century, Oregon’s Willamette Valley became one of largest hop producers in the world. Hops, whose cones flavor and preserve beer, were a relatively new addition to the agricultural landscape. Farmers first planted the crop in small acreages shortly after the Civil War to meet the needs of local brewers; then, after bountiful yields, quickly expanded their enterprise after finding ideal environmental conditions and viable transportation networks to reach larger markets. In the late nineteenth century, regional promoters claimed that farmers had caught “hop fever” and others suggested that the Willamette Valley was a “virtual garden spot” for hop cultivation. Upon this foundation and vast connections with people and goods from around the globe, the hop industry continued to expand, with farmers claiming the title “Hop Center of the World” by the early 1900s. Despite world wars, Prohibition, and the introduction of botanical pests and diseases, success has lasted to the present. In the past thirty years, the valley’s hop industry, aided by horticultural scientists, played a vital role in the craft beer revolution, because growers produced the hop varieties used to make distinctive beers. By making hops the central character in a wide-reaching history, this book aims to connect readers with their agricultural origins of the beers they drink and offer an enhanced sense of place for Portland and Oregon’s Willamette Valley.
Derek Byerlee and Jessica Fanzo
- Published in print:
- 2022
- Published Online:
- March 2022
- ISBN:
- 9780192848758
- eISBN:
- 9780191944109
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780192848758.003.0003
- Subject:
- Economics and Finance, Economic History
SDG2 recognizes that access to sufficient, nutritious and safe food is arguably the most fundamental necessity for a healthy and productive life. This chapter provides an overview of the many ...
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SDG2 recognizes that access to sufficient, nutritious and safe food is arguably the most fundamental necessity for a healthy and productive life. This chapter provides an overview of the many dimensions of hunger and malnutrition and how societies from ancient times—states, civil society, and private philanthropists—have gradually organized collectively to reduce the burden of hunger and malnutrition. The chapter begins with a discussion of famine, the most visible manifestation of hunger throughout history that was once a scourge in most societies but has now largely been eliminated in the twenty-first century. We then discuss how from the early twentieth century the goal of zero hunger became an international cause and a basic human right. The review then moves to the post-Second World War period when foreign assistance programs and countries focused on producing more staples to feed the world’s burgeoning population, narrowly measured in per capita calories supplied. In the 1980s, the focus turned from supply to access to food, and from around 1990 to the multiple dimensions of malnutrition, now including obesity. This has resulted in the move to multi-sectoral approaches including agriculture, the food industry, nutrition policy, public health, and the status of women. Finally, we conclude that although the world has registered impressive achievements on some measures of malnutrition, the continuing presence of hundreds of millions suffering chronic malnourishment in its various dimensions remains a huge challenge but one that with sufficient will and focus can be solved with available resources and knowledge.Less
SDG2 recognizes that access to sufficient, nutritious and safe food is arguably the most fundamental necessity for a healthy and productive life. This chapter provides an overview of the many dimensions of hunger and malnutrition and how societies from ancient times—states, civil society, and private philanthropists—have gradually organized collectively to reduce the burden of hunger and malnutrition. The chapter begins with a discussion of famine, the most visible manifestation of hunger throughout history that was once a scourge in most societies but has now largely been eliminated in the twenty-first century. We then discuss how from the early twentieth century the goal of zero hunger became an international cause and a basic human right. The review then moves to the post-Second World War period when foreign assistance programs and countries focused on producing more staples to feed the world’s burgeoning population, narrowly measured in per capita calories supplied. In the 1980s, the focus turned from supply to access to food, and from around 1990 to the multiple dimensions of malnutrition, now including obesity. This has resulted in the move to multi-sectoral approaches including agriculture, the food industry, nutrition policy, public health, and the status of women. Finally, we conclude that although the world has registered impressive achievements on some measures of malnutrition, the continuing presence of hundreds of millions suffering chronic malnourishment in its various dimensions remains a huge challenge but one that with sufficient will and focus can be solved with available resources and knowledge.