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REVIEWS
PLOWED UNDER: AGRICULTURE AND ENVIRONMENT IN THE PALOUSE
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by Andrew P. Duffin
foreword by William Cronon
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| University of Washington Press, Seattle, 2007. Illustrations, photographs, maps, notes, bibliography, index. 258 pages. $30.00 cloth. |
| The Palouse looks like a Grant Wood painting from the highway. Undulating rounded hills flow into the distance like great ocean swells. From Spangle in the north to Uniontown in the south and from the Snake River country west of Penewawa to Troy in the east, the Palouse dates from the last Ice Age, with its black loess soil the best in the world for agriculture. Prior to Euro-American settlement, native bunch grass protected the soil from wind and water erosion. During the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, however, farmers broke the land and planted soft white winter wheat, altering the ecology of the region for all time. The Palouse returned bountiful harvests and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle provided markets and access to the world. Wheat flowed out by rail and ship and money poured in. Palouse farmers ranked among the most prosperous and successful in the nation. Cattle disappeared from the grasslands and wheat, which brought greater profits, grew where livestock had grazed before. Quickly, Palouse farmers became great abusers of the soil. They gave little thought to plowing on contours or to terracing the hillsides. They ran their plows and grain drills up and down the rolling hills. Soon, the soil began to wash away, and gullies furrowed the hillsides. Summer fallowing became an act of faith but not science. Few people, particularly farmers, gave much thought to long-term consequences, because the top soil still produced bountiful wheat crops and seemed inexhaustible. |
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Although soil scientists had become concerned about soil erosion by the turn of the twentieth century, most agricultural experts believed that new technology along with bold agricultural polices that affected credit, marketing, and conservation could solve all farm problems in the Palouse. As the years passed, however, the old problems remained and new challenges emerged. Many farmers considered soil erosion the cost of doing business, while water pollution due to agricultural chemical applications on the land increasingly caused public concern. |
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Historian Andrew P. Duffin traces the exploitation of the Palouse from the beginning of settlement to the early-twenty-first century. He coins the term "agrarian liberal" to explain the actions of farmers who willingly participated in a market economy and used new forms of science and technology, particularly tractors and hybrid seeds as well as fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides, to increase production ( p. 14). Duffin tells a sobering story about agricultural expansion, production, and environmental degradation. He shows that Palouse wheat farmers remain committed to maximum production and give little thought to stewardship of the land or environmental change. As long as production and profits remain high and while the land appears unharmed and the topsoil deep, these farmers will continue to work the land. |
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Duffin does not condemn Palouse farmers, but he provides a clearly written, extensively researched, and cogently argued story about exploitation of the land for more than a century. This is not a study about whether the Palouse should be used for agriculture, because it will be farmed well into the future, but rather a historical analysis that ultimately leads to the present and can help policy makers, environmental interest groups, and farmers make informed decisions about future land use in the Palouse. Duffin does not believe that Palouse farmers will ever become conservationists, because it is not profitable for them to do so. Indeed, farmers change only when they must, usually adopting new practices when the proverbial bottom line calculates to their advantage. He contends that soil erosion in the Palouse will only decrease when farmers are paid more to withdraw land from wheat production and place it in the Conservation Reserve Program of the federal government. Palouse farmers have a strong sense of property rights and freedom of action. Without strict state and national land use regulations, and with environmental groups unable to change perceptions of the public good from unrestrained agricultural productivity to agricultural practices that will ensure clean water and a safe environment, little will change. Duffin is not optimistic nor should any reader be. This excellent study of agriculture in the Palouse merits the attention of anyone interested in agricultural history and the Pacific Northwest. It is an essential read. |
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| R. Douglas Hurt
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| Purdue University, Indiana |
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