About the book
This Blessed Earth: A Year in the Life of an American Family Farm
Copyright: 2017
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN-13: 978-0393292572
240 pages
Get the book
by Ted Genoways
Is there still a place for the farm in today’s America?
The family farm lies at the heart of our national identity, yet its future is in peril. Rick Hammond grew up on a small ranch, and for forty years he has raised cattle and crops on his wife’s
fifth-generation homestead in York County, Nebraska, in hopes of passing it on to their four children. But as the handoff nears, their small family farm―and their entire way of life―are under siege.
Rising corporate ownership of land and livestock is forcing small farmers to get bigger and bigger, assuming more debt and more risk. At the same time, after nearly a decade of record-high corn
and soybean prices, the bottom has dropped out of the markets, making it ever harder for small farmers to shoulder their loans. All the while, the Hammonds are confronted by encroaching pipelines,
groundwater depletion, climate change, and shifting trade policies. Far from an isolated refuge beyond the reach of global events, the family farm is increasingly at the crossroads of emerging
technologies and international detente. Following the Hammonds from harvest to harvest, Ted Genoways explores this rapidly changing landscape of small, traditional farming operations, mapping as
it unfolds day to day. This Blessed Earth is both a concise exploration of the history of the American small farm and a vivid, nuanced portrait of one family’s fight to preserve their
legacy and the life they love.
Praise for the book:
“A clear eyed and unsentimental look at how farming has become relentlessly optimized by automation, markets and politics; factors that don’t always take into account the guy who’s actually driving the tractor.”
- New York Times Book Review
“This Blessed Earth is a sort of universal story of family farmers and all they’re up against in their efforts to take care of the land and make a living from it. It’s also a crash course in the history that brought us to this place of corporate power, shrinking resources, and a changing climate. But it plants seeds of hope as the next generation prepares to inherit the family land and all the joys and challenges that come with it. This book is an invitation to all who care about family farmers―which after all is all of us, since we all eat!”
- Willie Nelson, founder and president of Farm Aid