The Reluctant Farmer: The Role of Multimedia in America’s 20th-Century Agricultural Transformation

Abstract

Ethnographic and ethnohistorical research with farm families in the Ozarks region of Missouri and Arkansas, USA, from 2002 to 2014, informs and inspires this study of the role of multimedia in the process of technocratic rationalization of farming in the United States throughout the 20th century. While interviewing farmers, I explored the agricultural media they consumed, ranging from farmer-organization literature to farm magazines and sales pamphlets. I documented and collected the primary sources of agricultural information and then systematically coded and noted patterns in the advertisement and article content. This paper presents the findings of that visual content analysis of farm media and the subsequent exploration of applied social science research that documented strategies for the diffusion of agricultural technology. I document and analyze the correlations between agricultural media content, applied research recommendations for industry, and changes on farms in the USA.

NOTES

Notes

1 During the 1930s a group of twelve “Southern” authors published I’ll Take My Stand, (Southerners 1930), which delineated the agrarian tradition and juxtaposed it with industrialism, outlining the evils of industrialism and the applied sciences that precipitated and disseminated it disingenuously. They proposed, as Marx had, that industrialism dehumanizes the laborer and depicts work itself as “mercenary and servile,” encouraging people to avoid it with labor-saving devices. Southern Agrarians, on the other hand, embraced labor and considered it both effective and enjoyable.

2 “This quality was defined in terms of contacts with county agent, attendance at Feeder’s Day conferences, favorability toward the College of Agriculture and the Extension Service, and willingness to try new farm practices before trial by neighbors” (Lionberger 1960:99).

3 Charles A. Siepmann (1950) delineates propaganda techniques in his book Radio, Television, and Society. Propaganda strategies he describes include repetition, insistent exaggeration, identification, the appeal to authority, false association, and herd instinct, many of which have indeed been consistently followed by the agricultural media.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Brian C. Campbell

Brian C. Campbell is Assoc. Professor of Anthropology and Environmental Studies at Berry College, in Mt. Berry, Georgia, USA. He is the director of the Environmental Studies Program which houses an agricultural biodiversity conservation project and an applied environmental anthropology research program on the 11,000-hectare campus. He received his PhD from the University of Georgia's Department of Anthropology, Environmental and Ecological Anthropology Program, then developed and directed the University of Central Arkansas anthropology program, and produces documentary films through Ozarkadia Films.