Read Revolutionary Agrarianism with interest. In the two rural areas I have deep familiarity with - Southern Wisconsin and the Central Valley of Fresno, California, there are Grange Halls, remnants of the agrarian populist movement in the later 1800’s and early 1900’s. Now rented out for community use for various events, dance classes and such. Both areas in the 70’s and 80’s saw the collapse of the economic viability of small farms and a whole generation of farmer children did not follow in their parents’ lifestyle. An agrarian culture died. In my own family an unbroken farming tradition that went back to the 1600’s starting in New England and moving to the Midwest in the 1850’s was broken. Of my five siblings and four cousins, only one farms, not a small farm but huge monocultures of corn and soybeans on thousands of acres of rented land utilizing huge machines, chemicals galore and Monsanto seeds, no animals anywhere. How to restart and regenerate a healthy version of a landed agrarian culture is a real conundrum.
Read Revolutionary Agrarianism with interest. In the two rural areas I have deep familiarity with - Southern Wisconsin and the Central Valley of Fresno, California, there are Grange Halls, remnants of the agrarian populist movement in the later 1800’s and early 1900’s. Now rented out for community use for various events, dance classes and such. Both areas in the 70’s and 80’s saw the collapse of the economic viability of small farms and a whole generation of farmer children did not follow in their parents’ lifestyle. An agrarian culture died. In my own family an unbroken farming tradition that went back to the 1600’s starting in New England and moving to the Midwest in the 1850’s was broken. Of my five siblings and four cousins, only one farms, not a small farm but huge monocultures of corn and soybeans on thousands of acres of rented land utilizing huge machines, chemicals galore and Monsanto seeds, no animals anywhere. How to restart and regenerate a healthy version of a landed agrarian culture is a real conundrum.