Roundup: April 2, 2021
A new article in Nature shows, after a meta-analysis of existing literature, that smaller farms, on average, have higher yields and more biodiversity than their larger farm counterparts. In this piece, Vincent Ricciardi, Zia Mehrabi, Hannah Wittman, Dana James, and Navin Ramankutty (all of UBC) synthesize decades of research and argue that more attention to farm size - and protecting smallholders particularly - is essential to sustainable agricultural development globally. The article is titled, aptly, Higher Yields and More Biodiversity on Smaller Farms.
Priya Baskaran (American University Law) has posted Thirsty Places, an article forthcoming in the Utah Law Review. This article examples a crisis of clean water access in both rural and urban communities categorized as “Geographically Disadvantaged Spaces” and specifically compares different, but related, water crises in Flint, Michigan, and rural West Virginia, emphasizing how entrenched structural vulnerabilities, including socioeconomic and race-related inequalities, can transcend geographic divides.
Here is a nice new short essay by Conor Gearin on place-based connections to Willa Cather’s work as part of an ongoing “Literary Landscapes” series in The New Territory, a magazine of “Land, People and Possibilities in the Great Plains and Ozarks.”
Chris Jones (UIowa Hydroscience & Engineering) has written a powerful essay entitled, Environmental Injustice, on his blog about Iowa’s water contamination caused by our collective agricultural choices. This piece also sees straight through the related racial and economic justice concerns.
News & Commentary
Katie Rose Quandt has published, America’s Rural-Jail-Death Problem, in The Atlantic. This piece highlight an underappreciated concern about dramatically disproportionate death rates in small (and rural) detention facilities in America. .
Larry McMurtry, a radical realist and author of the American West, has died. This guide to his work is quite good.
Jessica Fu has an interesting story in The Counter on some farmworker groups who oppose a recent bill in the U.S. House that could provide legal status to undocumented farm workers, worrying that it fails to provide sufficient protections for workers of the future.
The Tennessee Tribune has this feature on the struggle of the Gullah-Geechee Nation to survive gentrification, climate change, land insecurity via heirs property, and more.
Alan Ehrenhalt has written The Painful Question of Why Some Cities Thrive and Others Don’t for Governing: The Future of States and Localities, which engages with a recent book from Matthew E. Kahn and Mac McCommas (Johnson Hopkins), Unlocking the Potential of Post-Industrial Cities.
Events & Recordings
The Agricultural History Society has opened registration for the Triennial Rural Women’s Studies Association Conference, to be held May 11-15, 2021. Details here.