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NEWS for North Dakotans
Agriculture Communication, North Dakota State University
7 Morrill Hall, Fargo, ND 58105-5665
October 7, 1999
Tom Isern, Professor of History
North Dakota State University
©1999 Plains Folk
A few days ago my Lotte and I climbed to the top of the Hawksnest, that haunting ridge running roughly parallel to Highway 52 south of Carrington. The spectacular vista from the crest, standing among the communication towers, belies the modest appearance of the eminence from below. This is a good place to sort out a few things.
It's easy to read the patterns of cropping and tillage and pasturage that make the patchwork apparent from the Hawksnest. It's not so easy to read the people of the countryside, what makes them what they are. A big part of that, though, comes from how they earn their living.
Capitalists and Marxists agree that work is culture. Among farmers the production of a particular commodity creates a culture of its own--wheat culture, cattle culture, and so on. People who produce the same things evolve similar calendars, expertise, habits and, perhaps, ways of looking at the world. What I'm talking about here is what some scholars have come to call "commodity cultures."
With the support of the North Dakota Humanities Council we're spending time this fall studying two commodity cultures of the northern plains--sugar beets and buffalo. We're gathering a variety of documents about each of these, but most important, we're collecting oral history interviews with families who produce the two commodities. The interviews will be placed in the collections of the Institute for Regional Studies, housed in the library at North Dakota State University.
Why beets and buffalo? In the first place, because these are commodities that clearly have generated distinct crop cultures. The production of beets or buffalo is foremost in the identity of the farm or ranch that produces them. A beet farmer raises other crops, but beets drive the operation. A bison rancher produces other things, but bison are closest to his heart.
These two industries have some things in common--cooperative organization, for instance. We're interviewing mainly members of the Minn-Dak Farmers Cooperative (headquarters Wahpeton, N.D.) and the North American Bison Cooperative (headquarters New Rockford, N.D.). Both industries are part of the search for high-value commodities in an environment of economic disadvantage. Beet and bison producers also share many of the general habits and values of farm family life.
In certain important ways, though, they are different. Bison culture is young, in its first generation; beet culture is in its second or third. Bison culture has romantic origins, with early operators buying into an antiquarian legacy; beet culture has always been practical business. Bison producers generate their own technology and teach one another; beet producers have continual contact with university scientists, cooperative agriculturalists and crop consultants.
It's worthwhile just to describe the lives of people who produce these commodities, to try to understand them from their own points of view. We all share space in this part of the country and ought to try to understand one another. In the end, though, I'm going to ask some questions about how these commodity cultures fit into the broader picture.
In the way that homesteaders and elevator towns constituted a regional society a century ago, the commodity cultures are building blocks of a new regional society today. These groups organize themselves for production, processing and marketing in order to face the outside world more effectively. Where do they fit, though, within the region? When we pile these blocks together, fit them into a regional society, what kind of country are we going to have here?
Stay tuned--future Plains Folk columns will be reporting from the field.
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Source: Tom Isern (701) 231-8339
Editor: Dean Hulse (701) 231-6136
Click here to download a photo of Tom Isern suitable
for printing.
(isern.tif - 512KB b&w photo)
Click here to download a photo of Tom Isern suitable for printing.
(isern-h.tif - 426KB b&w photo)