Early Lessons from the Land of Opportunity

Writing in 1929, Baca County, Colorado, resident J. L. Farrand expressed concern over the state of agriculture in southeastern Colorado, which he believed to be dangerously untenable. Farrand cited a dire need in Baca County to "acquaint farmers with all phases of cooperative marketing" so that they could work toward stabilizing prices and become more adept at "analyzing the farm business." Farmers looked for safeguards against continued economic strain, and in most cases this meant that they prioritized production as the best and only path to economic prosperity. Farrand believed that such focus led farmers to sacrifice their land's long-term fertility and therefore its potential for sustained production. He thought they gave short shrift to soil fertility and conservation. For example, he noted that they dismissed the importance of crop rotation in trying to reinvigorate soil's productive capacity by temporarily retiring parts of their acreage. He took it upon himself to offer several demonstrations of suitable soil conservation techniques "to show the efficacy of proper cultural and tillage methods in the prevention of soil blowing and the conservation of soil moisture." Farrand understood that farmers remained most concerned for their economic well-being, and he seemed sympathetic in most respects. But he also knew that productive farming meant protecting soil fertility. Thriving in agriculture meant more than planting, killing weeds, and waiting for rain. To ensure a successful farm, family security, and economicprosperity, farmers needed to value the soil. Convincing agriculturalists of that need often proved a Sisyphean task, however. Farrand clearly appreciated the peril that would result from wanton degradation of the soil, but the intensive agricultural practices that accompanied the "wheat boom" and that made the land vulnerable had become commonplace in the region by the 1920s, and their hold over farmers made Farrand's task incredibly difficult. To promote a shift in land use, Farrand and others who shared his dismay over exploitive farming had to help farmers admit that their survival required them to reconsider their relationship with the land in southeastern Colorado. At its core, this meant recognizing the importance of protecting the soil before farmers could achieve a prosperous and sustainable agricultural economy.

This might not have meant much then or now had Farrand just been jotting this down in a journal or his memoirs. But Farrand was not a passive observer. He served as the Baca County Extension Service county agent in 1929, and his position allowed him to develop an intimate perspective on the process and prospects of farming while requiring him to share his views with county farmers. His Extension training prepared him for his post by instructing him on how to assess land use, to work with local communities, and to extend his knowledge and resources to improve the agricultural economy. He visited local farms, published bulletins, responded to letters and inquiries, and conducted informational demonstration meetings on issues ranging from food preservation to improving the family diet to proper crop rotation. These factors afforded Farrand a unique point of view regarding land use in southeastern Colorado; his pronounced anxiety over the agricultural economy's stability and his distress over exploitative land use proved remarkably prescient. When he extolled the need to adapt land use, he did so with a firm understanding of the region's history and an idea of its rather grim future.

Farrand was certainly not alone in identifying the need to reconsider the fundamental approach of American farmers throughout the country and in the West more specifically. By 1929, concern over the farm economy had already gained steam across the Great Plains as farmers tried to recover from the downward spiral beginning after the Great War, continuing through the 1920s, and becoming even more serious in the 1930s. He found that this economic situation only made the destruction of the landscape more problematic, which gave him a sense of urgency to facilitate a change in land use practices in the region. Little evidence of this shift existed in southeastern Colorado during Farrand's brief tenure, most likely because farmers had not yet faced a crisis severe enough to dispel the myth of abundance that boosters attached to the region in the late nineteenth century.

The first step on the path to identifying the need to adapt their land use patterns, a step that in large part originated because of and reflected the sense of urgency caused by the Dust Bowl, required farmers to combat the generations-old belief that the area, which boosters had labeled the "Valley of Content," was destined to inevitably become an agricultural juggernaut. Not surprisingly, periods of heavy migration into the area coincided with years of unusually wet weather that encouraged farmers to dismiss the area's very real climatic challenges to agricultural production. This willful dismissal, based in their stubborn refusal to acknowledge the historic frequency of droughts across the region and the fact that many migrants moved west during the wet years of the 1880s, left most southeastern Colorado farmers without a healthy and necessary appreciation for the region's environmental constraints. The disinclination to admit such constraints existed became increasingly entrenched during good rain years and when market demand encouraged farmers to maximize production to capitalize on high prices. These two factors emerged simultaneously during the 1910s and resulted in the "wheat boom" that accompanied World War I and that invited farmers to push production at all costs. By 1920 populations in Baca and Prowers Counties had peaked, evidence of the enthusiasm spurred by the wheat boom and more general faith in the future of agriculture in the region. Within the decade, however, much of that fervor had abated. The temporary run on wheat stalled in the early 1920s, the wet years appeared only intermittently, and the brief optimism faded by the late 1920s. Despite some out-migration, most agriculturalists remained committed to farming in that area and hoped that another break might come their way. Even as the Great Depression set in across the country, residents of southeastern Colorado occupied an unusual sort of stasis as they continued to produce sugar beets, wheat, and alfalfa and tried to sustain themselves. It was against this backdrop that Farrand attempted to convince farmers to buy into his idea of conservation and to change their ways. Their stubborn refusal to embrace his advice reflected what had by then become a common obstinacy among southeastern Coloradans who remained devoted to the idea that the next good year stood just around the corner.

The causes of the Great Depression are many and varied; the economic collapse that...