Global heartland : cultivating the American century on the Midwestern farm / Peter Simons.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Simons, Peter, 1978- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Farmers--Political activity--Middle West--History--20th century.

Farmers--Middle West--Social conditions--20th century.

Agriculture--History.

Agriculture.

Genre:

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (ix, 247 pages) : illustrations

Place of Publication:

Minneapolis, MN : University of Minnesota Press, [2025]

Summary:

Highlighting the critical role of midwestern farmers in the creation of the American Century Though often left out of the story of the making of the American Century, the farmers of the Midwest were at its center, fueling the nation's growing power in the midtwentieth century. In Global Heartland, Peter Simons explores how, after decades of slipping to the margins of an urbanizing economy, these farmers assumed renewed strategic and cultural importance as they produced essential sustenance for overseas troops and food rations for a domestic population. During the mid-1900s, once-isolationist midwestern farmers came to see the continental interior not as an insulated space but as an environmentally rich landscape that mandated them to accept a larger stake in global affairs. Simons traces this transformation from an older agrarian internationalism rooted in religion and ties to family abroad to illuminate the increasing influence of the U.S. agricultural community during the Cold War. Examining regional political parties, Lend-Lease programs, wartime mass media, and farmer-led relief programs, and interspersing this history with vignettes revisiting the Mercy Wheat campaign of 1947, the postwar International Farm Youth Exchange, and the Flying Farmers organization, Simons offers an enlightening consideration of midwestern farmers' involvement in America's international ascent. Unique in its focus on farmers and their work rather than the more common attention to food or agricultural commodities, Global Heartland complicates and expands ideas of the farm industry's role in American history.

Contents:

Introduction : comrades in the heartland

After the golden harvest : World War I and the postwar collapse

A rainbow over the Pacific : Lend-Lease and a rebirth of agricultural exchange

Necessary men : farm labor in wartime

Global heartland : reimagining the Midwest in wartime

Your feedlot touches the world : feeding the peace

Epilogue : starving the red menace : anticommunist food relief.

Notes:

Electronic book.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

1-4529-6458-0

OCLC:

1513454162