Agricultural History Review, Volume 55 Part 1 (2007), p. 150

On 9 February 1912, Henry Parke stood before the assembled newspapermen of DeKalb County, Illinois, telling the throng of the newly founded Soil Improvement Association. Its intent, he said, was to work for ‘making DeKalb County the banner county in the state ... Let us all pull together – the editor, the banker and the farmer – and secure for DeKalb County that prize which surely will reward us [with] better farmers, larger yields, higher land values, better roads, better schools, better industrial conditions and a higher standard [of living] ... We can make DeKalb County known around the world’ (p.54).

Eric Mogren’s Native soil elucidates Parke’s promise, which ultimately led to the transformation of the Soil Improvement Association into the DeKalb County Farm Bureau (DCFB), one of the earliest affiliates of the American Farm Bureau Federation and one of the most continuingly successful. Mogren is at his best in discussing the needs that brought the DCFB and its precursor into existence. As farmers struggled to make their once-fertile soil productive again via limestone and phosphates and the able assistance of their county extension agent William G.Eckhardt, so they grappled with their changing place in the politics and society of twentieth-century America.

Particularly telling is Mogren’s chapter on the First World War and the disruption this brought not only to Illinois agriculture, but also to that of the world. With surpluses looming worldwide, the DCFB sought new ways to market its members’ grain and livestock, as well as wool, poultry products and milk. They also turned to the federal government for assistance, contemplating the McNary-Haugen plans, the Agricultural Marketing Act and the arrival of Roosevelt’s New Deal. Although the treatment of the DCFB from the 1930s to the 1970s is rather thin, a detailed portrait of a farmers’ organization emerges.

Local history at its best, Mogren’s work is meticulously researched, lavishly illustrated and exceptionally well written. If there are flaws, they arise from the author’s failure to tie the local more directly to the regional and the national. For example, the Illinois Agricultural Association, the equivalent of state farm bureau federations in other states, is never given its due for aiding in the creation of the American Farm Bureau Federation. Nor does the American Farm Bureau Federation play much of a role in Mogren’s work despite being the largest general farm organization in the United States, and the parent agency to the DCFB. Similarly, the role of the Country Life Movement in the genesis of the DCFB and its nationwide counterparts is not given its due, nor are Mogren’s repeated general references to ‘Progressive-era’ movements and motivations especially helpful. A bit of contextualization would have been useful at points along the way.

Throughout the text, the challenges facing farmers and their responses to those challenges are given the foreground. The former included dubious markets, overwhelming surpluses and problems in input purchasing; the latter co-operative marketing, insurance, wool pooling, and purchasing guidance and collaboration. As Mogren closes his volume, however, he poses the most difficult question of all: What does the future hold?

In earlier chapters, Mogren had the benefit of the historical record to demonstrate what occurred when farm conditions deteriorated or when government policies worked to the disadvantage of agriculturalists. But it is in his final chapter, where he speculates about the future, that the author is at his finest, meriting the purchase price of Native soil. Chapter Six, ‘The Future’ begins by rehearsing the successes and failures of the DCFB through the better part of a century, then sets out the issues it and other farm organizations will face over the course of the twenty-first century. Among the problems the author foresees are the greying of the American farmer, the encroachment of suburbia on traditionally agricultural regions, changing diets, and ever-rising tax-es. His belief that organizations like the DCFB can solve these problems is strong, nearly as strong as the faith of founding DeKalb County Soil Improvement Association member Henry Parke.

Native soil should attract a good number of readers, particularly those interested in Illinois history, the history of agricultural movements, and the history of agriculture itself.