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NEWS for North Dakotans
Agriculture Communication, North Dakota State University
7 Morrill Hall, Fargo, ND 58105-5665
January 27, 2000
Tom Isern, Professor of History
North Dakota State University
©2000 Plains Folk
You drive by the plant entrance to the North American Bison Cooperative (NABC), along Highway 281 just south of New Rockford, N.D., and you know there is something mythic going on there. The sign at the entrance to the packing plant, so visually striking, invokes American Indian symbolism--shield, bow, feathers--and portrays a peaceful, pastoral landscape, with bison grazing grassy flats framed by inspiring hills.
Behind the sign is the poured concrete, square, utterly functional packing plant. And while many commercial bison do indeed graze grassy pastures, those destined for the NABC plant live out their days in feedlots. A packing plant should be efficient, and it takes grain finishing to make marketable meat, of course. I'm just saying that we all choose our symbols.
You may say, that's buffalo, and everyone is romantic about buffalo. Other operations are free of that sort of symbolic baggage. But how about sugar beets? The sign at the entrance of Minn-Dak Farmers Cooperative in Wahpeton, N.D., displays the co-op's logo: a stylized beet. Centered on the beet is a circular inset, and in the circle, at the end of some perfectly straight rows, is--unmistakably--a family farm, with a barn.
How many beet farmers do you know who still milk cows? Some call this sort of story telling public relations. I call it mythology--not to say it's not true--just because we all need to tell stories to define who we are.
As an organization, Minn-Dak has a good myth of origin, a story about how it came to be, told and re-told by founding fathers like Leo Yaggie and Jim Link. The way they tell it goes something like this: Back in the `50s, when they were hauling stock to West Fargo or for other reasons driving up and down the Red River Valley, they passed the farms of growers for American Crystal Sugar Company. They thought those operations looked like good farms--straight rows, clean fields. They also noticed well-kept houses, new machinery and late-model automobiles. They wanted that way of life, that beet-grower prosperity and status, for their families. That was why they persevered for 20 years against the odds to assemble the allotments, capital, marketing arrangements and grower commitments to make Minn-Dak a reality. This is a sort of epic story, with giants in the earth.
It's an amusing contrast, then, to hear Ken "Doc" Throlson, a founding father of the NABC, talk about the origins of his industry. His story is what you might call an anti-myth, or what I call an "aw-shucks" story. As he tells it, he's pretty much a failure in life, a self-described "black sheep" who drank, smoked, cussed and never got away from the county in which he was born. He talks about how he was no good in school, can't write, and feels like he's going to throw up every time he has to make a speech. But somehow he got through vet school, and he gives seminars on bison management all over the country.
Ken says he just backed into bison farming because of his perverse personality--so destructively competitive that he was ruining his health in the vet business--"My doctor said I wouldn't live another year," he recounts.
Of course we North Dakotans, being North Dakotans, say old Doc must be really full of himself to go around giving these speeches all the time, but he consistently gives out the story that he was just stumbling along until, fortunately, bison saved him.
It is a good sign when our world is populated with stories, stories that serve purposes. It means we're not just a bunch of people, but a culture. We should all believe one another's stories. They are all true.
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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)