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One way to understand what is happening in farming today is to listen to those who are involved in it. These stories provide a range of perspectives - not only illustrating how complex North Dakota farm problems are but also demonstrating ways in which rural people might meet the challenges. Nearly everyone agrees farming is changing drastically today, and change will likely continue for years to come. Whatever our farmers and ranchers decide to do will profoundly affect life on the northern Great Plains.
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The profit in grain is with the big millers and retailers, so for farmers like the Solbergs who are losing money raising wheat, there is an absurd irony in feeding sheep free day-old bread given out by local grocery stores. |
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The heavily symbolic concept of a Buffalo Commons is hard for many Plains people to accept, because the return of land to its natural state seems to signify the defeat of long-held dreams and a drift back to the past. There are many reminders of change visible in the countryside as old institutions give way to new methods, such as rural schools from homestead days that have sat idle due to the population shift from rural to urban. |
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The North Dakota landscape looks so productive and so familiar it is hard to think of it as struggling or failing. But what has been called a "comforting illusion of familiarity" masks fewer inhabited farmsteads, declining school enrollments and rural towns that are getting smaller each year. |
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Deb and Blaine Lundgren stand amid confection sunflowers they are growing on their farm near Kulm. Since being elected to the legislature, Deb has increasingly been asked by her constituents about state help for farmers. People ask her why are agricultural issues being overlooked when farming is the state's major industry? |
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
James Coomber is a professor of English and chair of the English Department
at Concordia College, where he has taught since 1966. He received his Ph.D.
from the University of Wisconsin at Madison and for many years chaired the Concordia
Conference on Reading and Writing. Coomber is co-author with Howard Peet of
the Wordskills vocabulary-spelling textbook series, as well as other publications
in the teaching of English.
Sheldon Green is a senior writer in the Office of Communications at Concordia College. He has been the editor of the Hazen Star weekly newspaper and North Dakota Horizons magazine and helped edit, design and photograph the five-volume North Dakota Centennial Book series. He is a graduate of the University of North Dakota.
