EARTH: the dynamics of non-industrial agriculture: 8,000 years of resilience and innovation, 3-volume set

Abstract

Much as curators and University scholars follow differing trajectories here in the United Kingdom, for our American counterparts, public history has developed powerfully and in parallel with its academic counterpart. This is a book that bridges these different spheres successfully and in so doing offers a subtle commentary on the importance of placing critical thinking and historical method at the heart of public interpretation and understanding. Agriculture, as Reid and her fellow authors so eloquently articulate, was once omnipresent and obvious. It has slipped out of our common lexicon and become the province of a specialized few. Like the warts and all storytelling of Wilder’s Farmer Boy, complete with its own situated and inherent bias and bigotry, Interpreting Agriculture is a subtle manifesto for the power of things now forgotten, for the durability of evidence of the once pervasive character of farming culture and life, for its potent nostalgic value, and for the myriad different ways that such heritage might be mobilized to address issues in the present-day. This is a volume that sets up a whole series of enormous questions and challenges that we must all face up to, most notably concerning the legacies of colonialism, land grabbing, a disenfranchised labour force, and the rise and impact of agribusiness. I only hope that Reid and her peers are working on a follow-up volume that sets ‘plow’ against ‘plough’ and situates some of these complex debates on a wider international stage. Also, I can now finish reading Farmer Boy with a far clearer, richer, and more specific contextual understanding of these agricultural pasts and of what value they may hold for me, for my son, and for future generations.