Overcoming the Great Divide

Some analysts see ordinary, working-class Americans in a backlash against a liberal, out-of-touch elite, sometimes putting universities with the elite and farmers on the other side.

As I write this column in the post-election season I am painfully aware that we are deluged with post-election analyses, most of which purports to tell us what went right or wrong--depending on your political persuasion--with the election. One of the re-occurring themes suggests that we are a nation deeply divided, and usually the divisions are described as blue versus red states, retro versus metro, or right versus left.

One of the more interesting analyses came from the pen of Thomas Frank. In his book, What's the Matter with Kansas?, Frank provides us with a witty and insightful hypothesis that describes our current cultural divide. Frank argues that we are experiencing a backlash on the part of ordinary working-class Americans who are tired of being marginalized by a class they consider liberal, elite, overbearing and increasingly out of touch with reality. Occasionally Frank makes reference to the fact that the university community gets lumped in with the elite class and that farmers increasingly side with the backlash.

Since land grant universities were created to serve working-class Americans, it is important to explore whether a divide between the university community and farmers exists, and if so, why.

Bridging both communities
I have had the good fortune of being both a farmer and a member of the university community. When I left a university career in the 1970s to manage operate our family's farm in North Dakota, my neighbors were deeply skeptical about my ability to manage a farm.

"He will lose his shirt" was a common phrase heard around the neighborhood. Their skepticism was not based on what I may have been learning at the university; it was based on the fact that they believed I had been part of an "ivory tower" world that likely made me unfit to deal with life on the farm.

In this context, I think Frank is correct. There is a cultural divide between the university and farmers that has existed for a long time. In fact, it could be argued that the split may have been rooted in the very fabric of the university system. One underlying assumption holds that the research community generates wisdom, which is then transferred to the farmer (the passive recipient) by the Cooperative Extension Service.

Norman Rockwell metaphor
A famous Norman Rockwell painting is a poignant metaphor of that cultural divide. In the foreground an extension agent measures the girth of a calf for the enthusiastic children (the future farmers) while their father watches unconvinced from the barn and the grandfather, even further from the action, peers over the farm wife's shoulder. [View "The County Agricultural Agent" owned by the Sheldon Gallery, Lincoln, Nebraska.]

The implication is that wisdom is only generated in the university while devaluing the knowledge generated by experience on the farm. But such an approach not only deprives both farmer and researcher of valuable information, it also contributes to the cultural divide.

Our tendency to favor reductionism--easily quantifiable research that tends to analyze the parts rather than the whole--further nurtures a cultural divide. This approach to solving problems tends to provide really good information about a small, isolated part of a very large, complex whole. Consequently, research tells us a lot about ingredients--how many units of nitrogen will stimulate how much of a yield increase, or how much oat bran contributes to a specific health benefit. But this approach can seldom tell us how those ingredients contribute to a profitable farm or a healthy family, let alone a healthy food system or a healthy landscape. One suspects it is by these latter realities that many working people evaluate research.

New research models
Some people argue that we are moving from an industrial era to an ecological era and in so doing, more attention is being paid to the interdependence and emergent properties of everything within nature. That may be one of the reasons new research models are being explored, such as the USDA's Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) program. The SARE program requires farmers and researchers to work together from design to evaluation, moving us toward more whole-systems, reality-based projects. Based on their experience, farmers bring insights that give depth to research. Working with researchers, farmers gain a new appreciation for the importance of testing assumptions against measurable data. And since both farmer and researcher are appreciative of what they are learning from each other, there is little to divide them.

For many years, the Leopold Center has followed this model. We encourage researchers to work with their counterparts in other departments, even other colleges, and to include farmers in their project planning and evaluation and certainly in their educational and outreach efforts.

Perhaps we could begin to explore further steps in healing the divide.

• Could we consider appointing experienced farmers as adjunct faculty to enrich our research with the benefit of on-farm experience?

• Should we consider conducting regular faculty seminars out on operating farms to obtain consistent feedback and to remember the daily realities that farmers face?

• Could we make a case, in cooperation with farm organizations, to restore some of the formula funds that have been lost in recent years, to conduct locally-relevant research, freeing researchers to work more closely with farmers instead of spending all of their time chasing research dollars?

Involving farmers
In this newsletter we announce that we have hired a farmer to direct our new grass-based research project. The search committee, consisting of researchers, farmers and other stakeholders, was insistent that what we needed most was on-the-ground experience to guide our work. We agree.

Some years ago Herman Daly and John Cobb suggested that we not only need to study problems in the context of disciplines, but that we also needed the disciplined study of problems in the world. And so we welcome John Sellers, farmer extraordinaire, to lead our grass-based research project.