Customer Reviews

The Land Was Everything: Letters from an American Farmer

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is one of those few books that I enjoyed and thought about so much that I bought six copies from Amazon to hand out to friends who I believed would also appreciate Hanson's efforts. It really is that exceptional! The thing most notable about "The Land Is Everything" is how much response it will provoke out of you if are a "thinking type". That doesn't mean you will love or hate it all...you will, however, THINK! Despite the definite order the book is arranged in, you will get a sense that much of it was almost written in streams of thought. Hanson seems to meander on tangents at times and in other places even rants but, this stream is still flowing briskly! He focusses in on "Man versus Nature", "Man versus Man", and "Man versus Self" in the realm of small-scale farming.

Hanson is uniquely qualified to write about the subject of farming and it's effects on character. He is a fifth generation grape farmer in California while also a Professor of Classics at CSU Fresno. The clincher is that he can convey his beliefs to paper with a VENGEANCE! The crux of this book is showing how the decline of self-reliant family farms in America is sapping the core character of what an "American" was in our first 200 years. He passionately describes the life, both good and bad, of the American farmer and gives numerous examples of issues that influence his/her character and culture. The fact that America, up until fairly recently, was predominantly a land of farmers is elaborated on at length. Hanson admires and respects the ways the brutal realities of farming the land force farmers to stay literally rooted in hard work, ethics, and honesty even if it sometimes makes them crazy! He then launches into his assessments of the effects on the gradual loss of this culture on the United States today as it becomes more and more "urban" and "cosmopolitan".

One thing I can almost promise: you WILL have an opinion on this book once you've read it. There will be points that you will agree or disagree with strongly and many others that will fall somewhere in between. The bottom line is that you will definitely feel better for having read it.

Finally, if you have found yourself drawn to understand the heroism and motivation of the New York City fireman who fought and died at the World Trade Center attack on 9/11, I doubly recommend this book.

As a graduate student in the university (stumbling along the first steps of academia) while at the same time dragging my small farm roots along, I find Victor Hanson's appraisal and insightful commentary frighteningly real to much of my own experience and upbringing. The Land Was Everything is exceptional and comprehensive in outlining a picture of rural life and ideology that most urbanites and farmers alike are not consciously aware of. He writes about the loss of the small farm agrarian but mostly he mourns the loss of characteristics and qualities that come from the farmer, his work, his life, and his toil. To most readers (the growing sea of concrete city folk) his words and stories feel alien and distant and sadly this further proves the author's point. Hanson's unique and diminishing perspective reads as a bitingly honest commentary about where we (as a nation) have come from, where we owe our success, the price of our success, and where we're going in this new millenium. Grounded in the fields and orchards of farming and agrarian life, Hanson demonstrates his intellect and skills of observation in the manner of a scholarly writer and though agrarian and intellectual often antagonize one another within the writing, he is successful at utilizing them to expose and comment on the other. If understanding and consciousness about any of this is the reward for the loss of the small American Farmer, then it's all I could ask for as a reader who wishes that others would pick up The Land Was Everything, listen to its pages, remember the voices of their past, and try to understand the tragedy that has already occurred.

Agrarianism goes down to a hard and dusty death. The realities of growing commodities as a family in California are tough. Hanson does know what he's talking about, contra reader S.M. Stirling, below (I wonder if this fellow even read the book, his comments are so off, not to mention being practically a personal attack on Hanson); he lives the reality of this difficult life while also being a classical scholar. He seems uniquely qualified to illuminate the Greek and Latin roots of agrarianism as the foundation of democracy, and with a lifelong interest in the classics, I found this very interesting; I learned a lot. I highly recommend this book, which I found compelling...

Coming from a farm background the book not only brought back memories for me but for the way I was raised. Somehow coming back to our beginning was refreshing and brought home the importance of a solid base, the earth. It doesn't seem to matter from which part of the country you come from, the farming profession was the basis for life and the heart of the community. It doesn't get better than that and, though we have seemed to evolve past the daily routine of the earth and animal caretaking, it can't leave us far behind. The vocabulary is quite evolved but that too states that those of the earth are not always of a simple mind.

This is certainly a wonderfully written book. I cannot agree with all of the author's opinions, nor his historical data, but he does make some good points and the book is well worth the read. It gives a point of view from the farmer's side, always a good thing, but that being said, it must also be noted that the author needs to face reality. I do recommend this one though and will probably read it again myself. A good one to add to your collection. Thank you Mr Hanson.

I find the book interesting for about a chapter. Too much 'showing off' Hansen's professororial interests on Crevecouer and the Greeks and Romans. Yes both historical references are fascinating but Hansen needs help with his tone and the very miring way he has about going to prove a point. You can start to predict the next sentence and the way it will end up satisfying the author's conscience. No, the book is not at all eloquent, but it doesn't make up for it with anything genuinely new and insightful either, for instance: on the agricultural dilemmas of our country and how they affect farmers personally. It is a book that blows off steam basically; finds a way to boast about the rough-hewn character of farmers (Not to be taken so literally, but nevertheless he manages to stereotype the farmer though he despises everyone else for doing it.)Wishy washy on his opinions, Hansen can't really whitewash what he thinks: that we are a bunch of suburban immoralists who just learned that the farm meant more than bucolic. Anyone who reads or watches the news or buys food at all knows more than Hansen thinks we do. As an ex-farm child, I find the book a fair tribute, but the personality of it is almost repulsive. We farmers are not superior keepers of wisdom, we are far more humble than Hansen's ilk. The farmers I know, past and present, have more important things to do than debate every issue, write books and books on our sorrows and fawn over our own demise.

Mr. Hanson exalts an American farmer -- rooted to the land, stable and conservative -- who never existed. And most certainly not in California! Like most agrarian writers, he's not really in the business himself. Thomas Jefferson, one should note, lauded the independent family-farming yeoman from the mansion of a plantation worked by hundreds of slaves.

And _he_ went broke!

Since the beginning of European settlement (and before, because the Noble Savage is a myth) American farmers have been mobile, land-mining, profit-maximizing nomads. They've all had a 'walking price' they would take to walk off their farms, and they cut and slashed and burned and eroded their way from the Atlantic to the Pacific in search of better deals. Land speculation was the primary national industry for generations.

California -- acquired through naked theft and robbery, accompanied by blatant genocide -- was developed largely by the "agribusiness" of its day, generously helped out by public subsidy. Anyone who's read Frank Norris and heard of the Union Pacific and the "Wheat Ranches" should know this.

Where does he think those irrigation canals came from? Horny-handed sons of toil?

Next, Mr. Hanson apparently thinks a fruit-farm is where our food is produced. Wrong: it's where our luxuries are produced.

We get our food from farms like the ones my relatives run in the northern prairies -- 16,000 acres, millions of dollars in equipment, and occasional holidays in St. Barts.

If Mr. Hanson wants to run a small farm, he should study some economics. My jaw dropped as I read that he was trying to grow _Thompson Seedless grapes_ on a postage-stamp holding. Those grapes are a mass-production staple; of course he and anyone else who tries to compete with the big boys will go broke!

Rising producivity hitting a relatively static market will put him inexorably in the scissors of a profit squeeze and eat his capital dollar by dollar, no matter how hard or well he works. He can write -- can't he add, multiply, subtract and divide? "Get big or get out" is the only advice applicable.

Growing staple crops on a small farm is like trying to compete with mass-produced cars from a backyard artisan's shop.

Producing premium wine grapes for a boutique winery, or specialized organic vegetables and cheeses under contract to high-priced restaurants -- those could be viable with a relatively small acreage.

But Thompson Seedless grapes? He might as well be trying to grow wheat with an ox-plow and a sickle!