Malabar Farm: Louis Bromfield, Friends of the Land, and the Rise of Sustainable Agriculture by Anneliese Abbott (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Malabar Farm: Louis Bromfield, Friends of the Land, and the Rise of Sustainable Agriculture by Anneliese Abbott J. L. Anderson Malabar Farm: Louis Bromfield, Friends of the Land, and the Rise of Sustainable Agriculture By Anneliese Abbott (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2021. Pp. ix, 251. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. Paperbound, $29.95.) Anneliese Abbott's Malabar Farm is a clear and concise treatment of the property known by the same name, currently an Ohio state park located near Lucas. The author, a graduate student in sustainable agriculture at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, makes excellent use of manuscript sources to tell the story of author Louis Bromfield's encounter with the land and his interest in conservation techniques. Abbott explores the organization of Friends of the Land, a group of conservation enthusiasts, as well as the fate of Malabar Farm through years of private and public ownership after Bromfield's death in 1956. Bromfield, a successful writer of fiction, came to north-central Ohio in search of a rural retreat in 1939. He fell in love with the property, purchasing it and naming it Malabar, after the southwest coast of India. Bromfield—more accurately, his farm manager—turned to the latest ideas in soil conservation to restore the productive capacity of the land, using practices such as removing hillside land from cultivation, applying fertilizer, and fencing woodlots to keep cattle out and promote timber growth, all in the name of diverse production and self-sufficiency. In the late 1940s, Bromfield turned away from diverse farm production in favor of monocropping grass to support the farm's dairy operation. Thanks to Bromfield's celebrity and his well-publicized conservation efforts, Malabar Farm became a magnet for soil conservation enthusiasts, many of whom believed that civilization was in danger due to soil loss. With the support of Bromfield and his influential friends and associates, these enthusiasts built a national organization, Friends of the Land, to evangelize soil conservation gospel. Even in Bromfield's lifetime, however, Malabar Farm was not profitable, and Friends of the Land went into a steep decline, ultimately merging with the Izaak Walton League. Malabar Farm supporters struggled to pay the mortgage, turning to philanthropists to bail them out on two occasions before transferring title to the state of Ohio. Abbott reveals the contested nature of the farm under state management, as well as changes in public interpretations of the site's significance. Abbott makes a few errors that detract from an otherwise compelling narrative. She repeats the old story of John Deere's use of steel in plow moldboards, when Deere's contribution was steel in the share and chilled iron in the moldboard. Inexplicably, she blames historians of the Cold War period for marginalizing the issue of soil conservation. She also seems to see the Cold War as strictly a 1950s [End Page 102] phenomenon, thereby neglecting work published in subsequent decades by scholars cited in her own bibliography, specifically that of historians Douglas Helms and Donald Worster. Beginning in the 1960s, Helms published widely on soil conservation in scholarly journals, public-facing magazines, and government reports. Abbott cites Worster's The Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s (1979) but fails to note that it was a Cold War-era indictment of American agriculture and capitalism for causing and exacerbating soil erosion. While Abbott's claim that public engagement with soil conservation declined in the 1950s rings true, it is far more plausible that a rising standard of living and intensification of Cold War tensions at home and abroad were to blame. Even so, conservation remained a government priority in the 1950s. In 1954, Congress passed and the president signed the Watershed Protection and Flood Prevention Act, providing matching funds for erosion control projects across the country. Furthermore, in 1956, Congress approved the Eisenhower administration's Soil Bank program, a massive acreage reduction effort to simultaneously support commodity prices and to "bank" the soil for future generations through soil conservation practices. Despite some shortcomings, the book is a pleasure to read and well-suited for a broad audience. Ample and well-selected illustrations complement the text. Readers will appreciate the role...