Review by New York Times Review
Farmers are fatalists. Rick Hammond, the Nebraska farmer at the heart of Ted Genoways's new book, "This Blessed Earth," has spent "his whole life just barely keeping the wolves away from the door," and he knows that the weather and the weeds will always win in the end. Genoways, in addition to his work as a journalist, is also a poet and a biographer of Walt Whitman, but this isn't a particularly lyrical book. For the most part, it's a cleareyed and unsentimental look at how farming has become relentlessly optimized by automation, markets and politics; factors that don't always take into account the guy who's actually driving the tractor. The book follows a year on Centennial Hill Farm, where Hammond and his family raise commodities including soybeans, corn and cattle. Worry is a central theme. Anxieties operate on at least three levels on Hammond's farmland: that of the global economy, more local political and financial concerns, and finally, at the deepest, darkest level, anxieties of obligation, self-worth and legacy. Hammond is caught in the massive currents of global markets; his crops are units in an industrial system that can just as well use soybeans from a Brazilian farmer if the numbers make sense. The financial pressures are crushing, and the loans, insurance and mortgages may seem abstract until the bank takes back a piece of land, or a hired hand is laid off. Hammond's work is also inevitably political. Sometimes those politics are historical, like the Cold War policies that declared, "Food is a weapon," and that still influence how he makes a living, but they can also be personal: At the seed dealership, Hammond is greeted with, "Well, if it isn't the local liberal." Tensions can even get explicitly spiteful, such as when a neighbor, angry about Hammond's outspoken opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline, declines to renew a lease on hundreds of acres of land that are vital to Hammond's income. But family, as in most stories, is Hammond's rockiest field. He wonders if his children have suffered for his ambition, if he'll leave them as much land as he was given, if his way of life has been unsustainable. Talking one night over Pabst Blue Ribbon in an abandoned farmhouse, he's frank with Genoways: "Was it worth it? I don't know. That will be for them to decide." Hammond, with his cowboy hat and thousand-yard stare, can feel like an archetype, but Meghan, his daughter, is a more raw personality. Funny and salty, she's fully aware that farming is a gamble in which the house always wins, but she is still eager to embrace the incredibly complex skills of the modern farmer: arbitrage and market timing, plant genetics and soil chemistry, how to quickly replace an irrigation pivot gearbox in the fading afternoon light. When Genoways moves away from the subject of the Hammonds, he writes with authority on plant breeding, water rights and, in a particularly interesting example, Henry Ford's early evangelizing for soy as an ingredient for car parts, an initiative that led Fortune to write, "There is a bushel of soya beans in every Ford car." Sometimes, though, we end up in the weeds. A long section about irrigation, for example, overwhelms with technical details and historical arcana. Genoways comes from a long line of Nebraskans himself, and late in the book, his father says of a dying prairie town: "Maybe this town has served its purpose, and now it's time for it to fade into history." It's a reminder that the family farm will inevitably pass, just another screen that we've used to project our anxieties about modernity and progress. But it's also an affirmation that those farms have also existed for a purpose: to feed us all. ? Arlo Crawford is the author of "A Farm Dies Once a Year: A Memoir."
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [November 26, 2017]
Review by Booklist Review
The American family farm is in trouble. Squeezed between large-scale corporate operations, demanding customers, and environmental issues, farmers face a daunting array of obstacles to keeping their businesses alive. Genoways, a journalist whose lifelong familiarity with farm life grounds his writing, follows one such family through a year of raising corn, soybeans, and cattle on their Nebraska farm. He reveals the complexity that marks agriculture today, from the astonishing array of technology providing up-to-the-minute data to the fluctuating market forces that create a razor-edge difference between success and failure. Along the way, he provides a compelling overview of the historical evolution of farming in America, including how Henry Ford is responsible for the current prominence of the soybean. The heart of this story is the Hammonds, a family preparing to transfer the operation of the farm to the sixth generation. Genoways tells their story and, through it, the story of farmers all over the country with compassion and insight. This Blessed Earth is a cogent, well-reported examination of the forces putting the family farm at risk.--Thoreson, Bridget Copyright 2017 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Journalist Genoways (The Chain) sheds light on the plight of 21st-century American farmers through the story of one Nebraskan family. For a year beginning in October 2014, he followed soybean, corn, and cattle farmer Rick Hammond through the vicissitudes of unpredictable weather, ever-fluctuating crop prices, and preparations to pass his farm down to his daughter, Meghan, and future son-in-law, Kyle Galloway. Genoways adds historical context to their situation, tracing Nebraskan history from the bloody years of the Civil War when President Lincoln signed the first Homestead Act, which coaxed thousands of settlers onto barren prairie, through agriculture's rapid industrialization following World War II and secretary of agriculture Earl Butz's dictate to "Get big or get out" in the early 1970s. Although much of this history has been told before, Genoways's account is unique for his dogged research and for his mastery in showing how these events have impacted farmers, their families, and the land. As the narrative moves to present day, the Hammonds' fate collides with climate change, the depletion of the Ogallala Aquifer, the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, and the diplomancy of the Bush and Obama adminstrations. By following a single family through time, the book captures the complex reality of farmers in America today both in terms of the future of the industry and of their everyday lives. It is an unvarnished portrait striking for both its depth and humanity. (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Journalist Genoways (The Chain: Farm, Factory, and the Fate of Our Food, 2014, etc.) returns to further study farming in America.The author's latest book is quieter and more meditative, as he chronicles his immersion in the seasons of a Nebraska family trying to survive on their family acres. Some of the mood conveyed by the up-close narrative reflects the quietness of desperation, as unpredictable weather, international market fluctuations, the changing practices of seed suppliers, the availability of water for irrigation, and government agricultural supports conspire to create greater-than-usual questions about whether patriarch Rick Hammond, his daughter, Meghan Hammond, and her husband, Kyle Galloway, can pay their bills in rural Nebraska. Genoways is a Nebraskan but did not grow up on a farm. He is a master at portraying the unique qualities of this Midwestern state but a novice about the intricacies of earning a living as a family farmer. Rick, Meghan, and Kyle exhibited remarkable patience schooling the author, allowing him to participate in their activities and record their thoughts over the months. Most of the book focuses on the farming of corn and soybeans, but Genoways also devotes interludes to the very different pursuit of raising beef cattle. The narrative is more or less chronological, following the seasons, but the author occasionally diverges to explore the characters of his protagonists and of farmers in general. For example, Rick can be generous to a fault with fellow farmers yet simultaneously competitive about crop growthin this zero-sum game, every neighbor who sells higher might mean Rick selling slightly lower. Meghan's back story is especially fascinating, as the author chronicles why she intended to leave farming but ended up pulled back in to the profession. Genoways memorably captures the difficult lives nonindustrial farmers lead in order to feed the world. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
