Farming in the Midwest has increasingly become industrialized, leading to declines in local businesses, tax revenue, and environmental quality. Some farmers are attempting to move away from industrial practices through place-making efforts like participating in watershed groups, implementing regenerative techniques like no-till and cover cropping, and interpreting the landscape in a way that supports these practices. Interviews with farmers in two Midwestern counties found they are developing a new identity as regenerative farmers through social networks and actions that contest the industrial model and aspire to create a new sense of place.

1. PLACE-MAKING TO
RE-CREATE
FARMING IDENTITY
John Strauser- 2020 Virtual ISSRM
Wisconsin Landscape- John Steuart Curry- 1939

2. Change in the Midwestern Farm
• Increase in farm size
• Number of industrial dairy farms in Wisconsin has
jumped to 55%.
• What has caused changes
• Global markets
• Less farm labor
• Profit margins
(Lobao & Meyer, 2001; Stanton et al., 2018; Barrett & Berquist, 2020)
Industrial Dairy Farm
Platteville, WI

3. Negative impacts associated with Industrial Farming
• Declines in local businesses
• Reductions in municipal tax revenue
• Greater income inequality
• Increased poverty
• Poorer public schools
• Fewer public services
• Fewer churches
• Lower civic participation
• Reduced water quality
(Lobao & Stofferahn, 2008; Goldschmidt, 1978; Crowley & Roscigno, 2004; McMillan & Schulman, 2003)
Fish Kill Caused by CAFO Run-Off
Photo Credit: Ben Uvaas- Wisconsin DNR1

4. Justifications for Industrial Farming
• Increased production
• Increased profit-margin
• Economy of scale
• Specialization of crop and livestock techniques

5. Research Questions
1. To what extent are farmers aware of detriments of
industrial farming practices?
2. To what extent are the developing solutions for a way
out of industrial farming practices?
3. What extent are they practicing strategic and
coordinated place-making efforts on there farm?
• Study site- Jo Daviess County, IL & Grant County, WI

6. Farmer Led Place-Making
• “Place-making actions of individuals, groups, and
organizations can vary from the everyday acts of
individuals, groups, and organizations to the
potentially more consequential and deliberative acts
of communities, corporations, and government
agencies.” (Williams, 2014)
• Aspirational place-making
• Regional farming identity
Fall Plowing, Grant Wood, 1931

7. Place-Making to Re-Create Farming Identity

8. Landscape Change
• Landscapes change over spatial and temporal scales
• Farming practices, communities, and policies co-evolve
• Resisting industrial farming through coordinated
sustainable farming
• Farmer to farmer place-making
(Nassauer, 1995: Morse et al., 2014; Cronon, 1983; Gobster et al., 2007)

9. Farmer Interviews and Focus Groups
• 21 semi-structured interviews
• 2 focus groups- 1 for each county
• Snowball Sampling
• Thematic analysis
• The current results are preliminary

10. Development of New Place-Meanings
“We do have a county (watershed) group now…it is kind of a unique relationship we
have… We are all in here to learn and we are more than willing to give information. I
have no secrets and that is the neat part about this.”
-Jo Daviess County Farmer
“We implement a lot of no till. We’ve ramped that up the last five years. Because we’ve
been getting a lot more of these big rain events… maybe it’s the cause of global warming
I hope not cause it is not good and we don’t benefit anything from a four-inch
downpour… Once we get that (watershed group) rolling, I think that it is gonna be
popular to see new practices.”
-Grant County Farmer

11. Influencing actions on the landscape
“We are just trying to no-till cover crop. Utilize waterways. Do conservation. We
are thinking about maybe putting uh some of the pollinator strips in too. That they
the uh CRP is allowing that as far as a program. There are just all sorts of
enhancement type things we can do.”
-Jo Daviess County Farmer
“As a grass farmer, we’ve never re-plowed something. If we wanna introduce a new
grass or another legume, I frost seed it and put it on, and we’ve got a tremendous
mix, I think, of clover and grass down here… We don’t have a lot of equipment.”
-Grant County Farmer

12. Changes in Material Landscapes
“There are so many other benefits when my farming practices changed to a more
regenerative type farming and you know we are not using insecticides we are not you
know we are going to cut back on herbicides and on fertilizer. We stopped using seed
treatment. All of these things go together. And I am just amazed at how everything
flows.”
-Jo Daviess County Farmer
“Regenerative farming is about mimicking Mother Nature. How do you mimic Mother
Nature by tilling the land? She doesn’t till the land. She leaves perennial roots in the
ground… She leaves the ground covered… She has always had livestock… At all times
there is a rotation of livestock.”
-Jo Daviess County Farmer

13. Interpretation of New Landscape
“Because hay alfalfa does not like a lot of moisture… so you put it on the
hillsides which is red clay and the hay does good in red clay. So it is very
conducive to beef cattle.”
-Grant County Farmer
“If the government would quit subsidizing not for profit things pretty soon,
they would start farming only the ground that grew 200 plus bushel of corn
were they could make it cash flow without a check from the government… I
have decided that socialism is only socialism if you give money to poor
people. If you give it to farmers and billionaires, it isn’t socialism
(sarcastic expression).”
-Grant County Farmer

14. Takeaways
• Current activity shows a shift away from the
industrial farmer to regenerative farmer identity
• Responsibility for regenerative farming was
embraced by agriculturally based social networks
• Farm practices that aspiring for a new sense of
place
• Contesting industrial farming
• Farmers varying on the way they interpret and
act on the landscape

15. Work Cited
Barrett, R., & Bergquist, L. (2020). Industrial diary farming is taking over in Wisconsin, crowding out family operations and raising environmental concerns.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. February 11, 2020
Cronon, W. (1983). Changes in the land: Indians, colonists, and the ecology of New England. Hill and Wang.
Crowley, M., & Roscigno, V.J. (2004). Farm concentration, political-economic process, and stratification: The case of the North Central U.S. Journal of Political and
Military Sociology. 32(1): 133-155.
Gobster, P. H., Nassauer, J. I., Daniel, T. C., & Fry, G. (2007). The shared landscape: What does aesthetics have to do with ecology? Landscape Ecology, 22(7), 959–
972.
Goldschmidt, W. (1978). Large-scale farming and the rural social structure. Rural Sociology. 43: 362-366
Lobao, L., & Meyer, K. (2001). The great agricultural transition: Crisis, change, and social consequences. Annual Review of Sociology. 27: 103-124.
Lobao, L., & Stofferahn, C.W. (2008). The community effects of industrialized farming: Social science research and challenges to corporate farming laws. Agriculture and
Human Values. 25: 219-240.
McMillan, M. & Schulman, M.D. (2003). “Hogs and citizens: A report from the North Carolina front.” In Falk, W.W. Schulman, M.D., & Tickamyer, A.R. (eds.),
Communities of Work, (pp. 219-239). Athens, OH: Ohio University Press.
Morse, C.E., Strong, A.M., Mendez, V.E., Lovell, S.T., Troy, A.R., & Morris, W.B. (2014). Performing a New England landscape: Viewing, engaging, and
belonging. Journal of Rural Studies, 36, 226-236.
Nassauer, J.I. (1995). Culture and changing landscape structure. Landscape Ecology. 10(4): 229-237.
Stanton, R.L., Morrissey, C.A., & Clark, R.G. (2018). Analysis of trends and agricultural drivers of farmland bird declines in NorthAmerica: A review. Agriculture, Ecosystems,
and Environment. 254: 244-254.
Williams, D. R. (2014). Making sense of “place”: Reflections on pluralism and positionality in place research. Landscape and Urban Planning, 131, 74–82.
Photo Credit
1- https://www.jsonline.com/in-depth/news/special-reports/dairy-crisis/2019/12/06/industrial-dairy-impacts-wisconsin-environment-family-farms/4318671002/