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Review
Review of: Standing Their Ground: Small Farmers in North Carolina since the Civil War by Adrienne Monteith Petty
The American Historical Review, Vol.120(4), pp.1494-1495
10/2015
Web of Science ID: WOS:000365809700077
Abstract
EXCERPT: The power of the Jeffersonian ideal in American agriculture is striking. Although most of America’s food is produced by capital-intensive, mechanized, and industrialized production processes, the small, family-owned, community-based farm holds a special place in American history. What if, the question goes, alternative policy decisions were made that favored small landowners? It is merely a hypothetical question, because a large body of historical research indicates that the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) favored large landowners over small, white farmers over those of color, and mechanization over traditional farming. Given USDA biases, practically from its creation, in favor of consolidation and economies of scale, alternate visions were unable to survive the political and policy debates of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Perhaps more surprising is the strength and longevity of movements that argued for a more equitable policy structure that would have presumably resulted in a very different set of opportunities for Americans interested in staying on the land as farmers.
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Details
- Title
- Review of: Standing Their Ground: Small Farmers in North Carolina since the Civil War by Adrienne Monteith Petty
- Publication Details
- The American Historical Review, Vol.120(4), pp.1494-1495
- Resource Type
- Review
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press; New York
- Copyright
- © 2015 American Historical Association. All rights reserved.
- Identifiers
- WOS:000365809700077; 99380502796706600
- Academic Unit
- College of Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities; History and Philosophy
- Language
- English