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Accepted Contribution:
Discourses soil conservation and soil health during the second American agricultural revolution, 1945-1970
Katherine Lawless
(Huron University College)
Explores the emergence of soil conservation and soil health concepts during the second American agricultural revolution, especially in relation to discourses of national wealth, both economic and social.
Contribution long abstract:
I am interested in contributing to the roundtable with a discussion on soil conservation and soil health, concepts that emerged in the United States during the second American agricultural revolution, 1945-1970. These complementary concepts reflected deep anxieties about national stability in a time of massive social upheaval. Despite its association with the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, soil conservation emerged in the mid-nineteenth century among New England farmers who recognized the impacts of their practice in the changing colour of their soils. Similarly, while soil health is generally understood to be a recent concept, it emerged in the 1950s among Southern farmers who were seeing the effects of erosion. What I find interesting is that both of these concepts really started to take hold in soil science and politics during the mid-twentieth century in a time of impoverishment. I'd love to talk about how both are in some ways discourses of economic restoration. Soil conservation seeks to restore national wealth, and soil health seeks to restore the ecosystem service of human health. In general, I'd like to examine these discourses further in the American context and possibly compare them in a global context.