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Abstract
In this paper we take up Tania Li’s question ‘what is land’. While her interest is in how land becomes inscribed so as to make it investable, ours is in reversing the sequence so as to make long-inscribed land de-investable. We focus on a family farm in Eastern South Dakota which was bequeathed to the US Fish and Wildlife Service in order that its tilled fields of industrially produced corn and soybeans be replaced with native, tallgrass prairie. The process – one of de-inscription – involved evocations of settler heritage which, ironically, provided a prairie-friendly justification for massive prairie destruction.
Acknowledgements
Our project began early in 2012. In addition to spending four summers and a fall in South Dakota, we consulted with environmentalists, biologists, hunters and restorationists in Arkansas, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Mississippi and Wisconsin. We have debts to many. But, among those who helped us learn about prairie and restoration, we are especially grateful to Jeb Barzen, Darla Bielfeldt, Ron Bowen, Pauline Drobney, Kurt Forman, Natoma Hansen, Melissa Hauschild-Mork, Chris Helzer, Carter Johnson, Carol Johnston, Frederick Kirschenmann, Michael Lannoo, Noel Matson, Curt Meine, John Miller, Jeri Neal, Mark Rasmussen, Bryan Schultz, Tony Thompson, Tom Tornow, Spencer Vaa, Lynn Verschoor, Charles Woodard, Chris Wright and Joy Zedler.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1 For a discussion of the contrast between value and values, see Gewertz and Errington (Citation2015).
2 That the farm had been formerly ours, and that we had given it away, was seen by most we spoke with as justifying our continuing interest in its future.
3 Arturo Escobar, in his discussion of conservation programs, describes that which is often beyond consideration:
Cultural conflicts are often the reflection of underlying ontological differences, that is, different ways of understanding the world and, in the last instance, different worlds. These differences are more patently clear in the case of, say, indigenous peoples and ethnic minorities. While they are increasingly recognized, for instance, in conservation programs (e.g. indigenous knowledge) they are rarely incorporated in program and project design, for to do so would mean very significant transformations in the existing frameworks and ultimately a radical questioning of foundational modern assumptions, such as the division between nature and culture. (Citation2008, 14–15)
4 Tallgrass prairie is fringed on the east by deciduous woodland and on the west by mixed grass which yields to shortgrass prairie. The major differences between types of prairie derive from the amount of rainfall, with tallgrass receiving the most. This difference also means that tallgrass prairie is most likely to be plowed under for agricultural use.
5 As the anthropologist Jessica Cattelino notes in her discussion of ‘the production of nature’, the process of ‘“reclaiming” land without regard for indigenous owners because their use of it was deemed “unproductive”’ has been typical of settler colonialism (Citation2011, 5).
6 As Li notes (2014, 594–97), resource making is accompanied by various forms of chicanery. Certainly, that the massive dispersals of federal land to homesteaders, railroads and state governments had a significant role in shaping South Dakota is not news to contemporary residents. Nor would it be news that what could often be characterized as ‘land grabs’ and ‘land rushes’ (to use Li’s terms) were marked by lobbying, fraud, stock manipulation, sweetheart deals, intimidation and eviction. And there is general recognition that the creation of South Dakota, both territory and eventual state, was premised on the conversion by settlers of prairie into agricultural land for produce and profit.
7 For instance, SDSU now offers a program in ‘precision agriculture’ (SDSU Citation2015).
8 The rectangular system of surveys in the United States began with passage of the Land Ordinance of 1785 (see Fodness Citation1994). Because the grid ignored natural features of the landscape, ‘the ecologist Paul Shepard dismisses the survey unequivocally as an exercise in nature-hating’ (Rees Citation1982, 160). Shepard himself writes: The grid imposes ‘conditions on the natural environment which work ultimately to its own destruction’ (Citation1967, 235).
9 That Midwestern marshes and other wetlands provide important ecosystemic services, such as absorbing agricultural run-offs, is well known. Unfortunately, private landowners often do not find it in their economic interest to provide these services.
10 Paul Errington has written about this hut in his autobiography. See Errington (Citation1973, 17).
11 If any of the buildings constituting the more contemporary farmstead had remained (rather than having mysteriously disappeared since the last farm family was resident), they would have been removed as of little historical interest.
12 See, especially, Jordan (Citation2003). The environmental scholar Eric Higgs has argued for restoration as a ‘focal practice’, one which strives ‘toward valuing ecosystems in their depth and honoring the social relations that form in the midst of restoration’ (Citation2003, 194–95). See, too, Van Wieran (Citation2013).
13 Some of the seeds had been harvested from USFWS’ existent prairies; some were purchased from Milborn Seeds in Brookings.
14 An ‘ecocentric’ approach to restoration would aspire to duplicate the total web of life in native prairies. In addition to the numerous species of deep-rooted grasses and forbs, it would seek to re-establish the multitudinous fauna of this distinctive biome (fauna ranging from buffalo to bobolinks, from monarchs to microbes). Although many USFWS people we know had a high respect for nature in and of itself, they recognized that such a restoration was not a feasible part of their mandate.
15 On green grabbing cross-culturally, see, especially, Fairhead (2012); Cavanagh and Benjaminsen (Citation2015); Corson et al. (Citation2015); Rocheleau (Citation2015).
16 Of course these factory-like agricultural operations encounter friction in the form of moving targets: resistant pests and weeds; or, in the case of confined feeding operations like piggeries, viruses. On the persistent inefficiencies of Midwestern factory hog farms, see Blanchette (Citation2015).
17 Annual agricultural field days, as staged by the Hefty Brothers at their farm supply headquarters in eastern South Dakota, showcase and provide cost-benefit analyses of the latest techniques and technologies, ones intended to facilitate a more efficient and profitable operation.
18 The most recent statistics on farm size in the area of South Dakota near our former family farm come from the 2012 Census of Agriculture for South Dakota. As stated in this source, the average farm in Brookings County was 439 acres. Of the immediately adjacent counties, the average farm in Hamlin County was 636 acres; in Kingsbury, 1006 acres; in Duel, 515 acres. According the agricultural economist Larry Janssen of SDSU, most of the land in Brookings County was, at the time of this census, controlled in farming operations of 260 to 5000 acres, operations in which farmers augmented the land they owned with land they leased. Such arrangements have been common in this part of the state with over 45 percent of cropland leased and at least one third of pastureland. Overall, more than 40 percent of farmland acres have been leased (L. Janssen, email communication, 3 March 2016). In this regard, the neighboring farmers who had leased our former family farm were typical in their desires to expand their operations. Such agriculturalists generally regard big as better.
19 The auctioneer’s advertisement gave the legal description of the land and its soil type (Kranzberg-Brookings Silty Clay Loam), as well as its impressive productivity index of 88.3.
20 Conversation with Chris Helzer, 26 June Citation2015.
21 And the value of these donated properties, together with other monetary donations (some of which involved rather complicated arrangements with private trusts so as to secure tax advantage), was designated ‘private monies’ from ‘matching partners’. This amount, over a million dollars, could in turn be leveraged against monies allocated under a federally funded conservation plan (the North American Waterfowl Management Plan) to acquire matching funds by which the USFWS could purchase conservation easements from willing landowners in the relevant geographical area.
22 This, according to a statement that Fred signed. In its scope, the HDGPP sought to safeguard not only tallgrass prairie but the zone of westward transition from tallgrass to mixed grass prairie (where the Dunn homestead was located).
23 The geographer Ronald Rees reports that ‘to enrich their understanding of the problems of adjustment to an alien environment, American astronauts were required to read Walter Prescott Webb’s classic study of the Great Plains’ (1982, 157).
24 According to the agricultural historian David Schob, despite the expression that one had to ‘“tickle sod with a plow so that it would laugh with a crop” … cutting prairie sod was no laughing matter but rather grim and arduous work; a less cheerful but more realistic adage termed prairie breaking the art of “deviling”’ (Citation1973, 47). In fact, so arduous was cutting ‘a furrow sixteen to thirty inches in width and two to six inches in depth’ – in effect, peeling off the top layer of the sod (whose root system extended six to eight feet into the ground) – that settlers often hired ‘agricultural laborers with special plows and large teams of horses or oxen to accomplish the task’ (1973, 49–50).
25 To claim legal title to land at the end of five years, homesteaders had to complete a ‘Proving Up’ Form. They had to prove that the improvements required had been done and to find two neighbors who were willing to swear to certain facts: that they had known you for five years; that you were the head of a household and a citizen; that you were living on and farming the land being claimed for all five years; that you built a house, and of what kind (see Nebraskastudies.org Citationn.d.).
26 Interview with Lynn Verschoor, 11 June 2015.
27 Admittedly, commemoration and the linked emotion of reverence can drift into nostalgia, at least in the sense that we may not see the likes of previous heroes again. However, Dunn’s paintings do not evoke regret that the past is behind us – that the past was better in significant regards than the present. Our instance, thus, diverges from the case studies of nostalgia found in Angé and Berliner (Citation2015), and the discussions of imperial nostalgia in Rosaldo (Citation1989) and of colonial nostalgia in Bissell (Citation2005).
28 One of the granddaughters subsequently visited where Dunn had painted, wishing to experience and to paint it herself.
29 This was a figure given in a Washington Post discussion of the remarkable success of a recently published annotated edition of Wilder’s autobiography, Pioneer girl. For the review, see Krug (Citation2015). For the annotated autobiography, see Hill (Citation2014).
30 We credit Miller (Citation1994, 97) for bringing this quote to our attention.
31 If recognizing the prairie as challenging and character-building heritage, few visitors to whom we spoke at De Smet either knew, or wanted to know, that grown-up Laura and her husband had sold their own De Smet homestead. Defeated by drought, grasshoppers, infant death, prairie fire and diphtheria, the Wilders moved to a more clement Missouri where Laura eventually wrote her books. Certainly, for some visitors, even the minor vexations of prairie life were disconcerting to their efforts to share Laura’s experiences. Hence, in chatting with the manager of the visitor center about how people actually responded to prairie, we were told of the family which, disembarking from a horse-drawn wagon at the school house on the Wilder property, decided to walk back across a field saying that ‘this was what Laura would have done’. However, after negotiating hot, uneven and tick-filled terrain, they arrived at the visitor center considerably out of sorts.
32 While, of course, knowing about each other, they never met.
33 Given this sentiment, it is not surprising that many small South Dakota communities annually commemorate early settlement. Thus, in the vicinity of our former farm, the town of White celebrates ‘Pioneer Days’, and the town of Volga celebrates ‘Old Timers Weekend’.
34 See, especially, Jordan (2003), Hall (Citation2005) and Clingerman and Dixon (Citation2011).
35 This project, promoted by the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University, is called STRIPS: Science-based Trials of Rowcrops Integrated with Prairie Strips.
36 This project is called Integrated Roadside Vegetation Management (IRVM).
37 We were especially impressed with the professionalism of Ron Bowen, President of Prairie Restoration, Inc., when we interviewed him on 6 July 2015.
38 In South Dakota, the annual average per bushel price in 2012 for corn and soybeans was USD 7.05 and USD 14.05 (see USDA Citation2013); as of 24 October 2015 (at the Brookings co-op), the price was USD 3.32 and USD 8.25 (see Brookings Register Citation2015).
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Deborah Gewertz
Deborah Gewertz I fell in love with anthropology after my first course as an undergraduate – this despite the fact that my BA degree was in English literature. After graduation, I decided to make the switch and earned my PhD in anthropology from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Over the years, I have pursued research in Papua New Guinea, Fiji, New Zealand and Australia. My interests (for the moment) are in social history, the history of anthropological thought, and global food systems. I have written about ethnohistory, gender, sociocultural change, class formation and global engagements and published in all of the major journals of anthropology. Long collaborating with Frederick Errington, I co-authored Cultural alternatives and a feminist anthropology; Twisted histories, altered contexts; Articulating change in the ‘last unknown’; Emerging class in Papua New Guinea; and Yali’s question: sugar, culture, and history. Yali’s question was written initially to be presented as the Louis Henry Morgan Lecture at the University of Rochester. Most recently, Fred and I have completed Cheap meat, a book about the trade in fatty meat from New Zealand and Australia to (some of) the Pacific Islands, and The noodle narratives, a book about the global rise of industrial food into the twenty-first century. To do this work, I have received grants from Amherst College, the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Science Foundation, and the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. We are now embarked on a new project concerning environmental issues and industrial agriculture in South Dakota.
Frederick Errington
Frederick Errington Although I initially wanted to be a biochemist, I could not resist the allure of traveling to faraway places and conversing with people whose lives were different from my own. I became a sociocultural anthropologist and have engaged extensively with people in Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, the US states of Montana and South Dakota, Fiji, New Zealand and Australia. My interests have long been in the varied ways in which people make meaning for themselves, often under difficult and changing circumstances. I have written about ‘cargo cultures’, religious change, aesthetics, gender, class formation and global engagements, and have published in all of the major journals of anthropology. In collaboration with Deborah Gewertz, I co-authored Cultural alternatives and a feminist anthropology; Twisted histories, altered contexts; Articulating change in the ‘last unknown’; Emerging class in Papua New Guinea; and Yali’s question: sugar, culture, and history. Yali’s question was written initially to be presented as the Louis Henry Morgan Lecture at the University of Rochester. Most recently, Deborah and I completed Cheap meat, a book about the trade in fatty meat from New Zealand and Australia to (some of) the Pacific Islands and The noodle narratives, a book about the global rise of industrial food into the twenty-first century. To do this work, I have received grants from the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Philosophical Society, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Science Foundation, and Trinity College. We are now embarked on a new project concerning environmental issues and industrial agriculture in South Dakota. Email: [email protected].