Farms and farming
On this page are links to articles about farms, farmers, and farming from feed grains to forestry, about the strip-mining and reclamation of prime farmlands and polluted runoff from farm fields, about agribusiness and ag policy, about the farm economy and rural Illinois.
I came from farm people—people who farmed, who sold machines to farmers and lent money to farmers and bought and sold the things farmers made. I grew up in in a state in which city folks are as perfectly surrounded by farms as Hebrideans are by water. The first two pieces I sold to national magazines were about farming and farmers.
During my 40-year career, the family farmer became the agribusinessman, the grain-and-hog farm became an outdoor factory, and agriculture completed its evolution from growing food for people to producing feedstocks for industry—much to lament, but more happily, much to write about. My pieces gradually became more critical and my prose more pointed but that had no effect on public debate whatsoever. Farming still enjoys a privileged place in Illinois culture and politics that I think the industry is less and less entitled to.
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The Family Farmer: An Endangered Species?
A “typical” family farmer of central Illinois in the 1970s.
Across the Board September 1978
On converting Illinois corn to motor fuel
Illinois Issues January 1981
Recreating a paradise of weeds in Illinois
"Prejudices" Illinois Times January 15, 1992
Chicago's economic and environmental past, synthesized
Illinois Times December 11, 1991
How Chicago Became the Gateway to the West
A review of Cronon’s Nature's Metropolis
Chicago Enterprise October 1991
Turning Illinois’s poor counties into bucolic Disneylands
"Prejudices" Illinois Times May 26, 1983
Why soil loss in Illinois is a bad thing
The Ecologist (UK) No. 5/6, 1984
The world through the eyes of Farm Week
“Prejudices” Illinois Times February 3, 1983
Trading coal today for corn forever
“Prejudices” Illinois Times January 18, 1980
Charlie Boon, Logger, of Goofy Ridge
A tinkering entrepreneur in the old Illinois style
Illinois Times November 24, 1978
Illinoisans debate how to treat animals for food
"Prejudices" Illinois Times January 28, 1982
Where Corn Is God
Not quite everything you wanted to know about corn
"Dyspepsiana" Illinois Times January 21, 2016
Coal companies plow up central Illinois
“Prejudices” Illinois Times July 25, 1980
It's Not the Heat, It's the Corn
Are row crops making summers unbearable?
“Dyspepsiana” Illinois Times July 12, 2011
The demise of the Illinois countryside
“Prejudices” Illinois Times August 10, 1979
Planting new questions about Illinois ag
“Prejudices” Illinois Times April 12, 1984
Fair Deal
Turning the state fair into an expo of real rural life
"Dyspepsiana" Illinois Times September 8, 2016
Toward a Farm-fresh Food System
Can central Illinoisans learn to like their broccoli?
"Dyspepsiana" Illinois Times December 9, 2010
Betting the Farm
Is Illinois farmland the next real estate bubble?
"Dyspepsiana" Illinois Times May 5, 2011
Could building materials be a new Illinois crop?
"Dyspepsiana" Illinois Times April 24, 2014
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