The Conservation-Industrial Complex and Agriculture in the Driftless Area
- Jason G. Freund
- 11 hours ago
- 9 min read
As I start this post, I recently finished Joshua Nygren's book, "The State of Conservation: Rural America and the Conservation-Industrial Complex since 1920". This post is something of a book review but hopefully more of a review of the intersection of agriculture and the environment.
I was one of about 60 other people that received the book as part of an event at Jersey Valley County Park hosted by the Coon Creek Community Watershed Council on June 4th, 2025. For more on the event and the book:
I am not well-equipped to review an academic history book, so I will give some thoughts on the topic and provide what insight I can. The book is extensively researched - each chapter contains well over 50 footnote citations and nearly 100 pages are dedicated to those notes and the literature cited. The argument - as I understand it - is that the "Conservation-Industrial Complex", an obvious nod to the "Military-Industrial Complex", a term coined by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in his farewell address to the nation, was created as business figured out how to profit from government agricultural programs. The book takes us through the history of USDA programs from the short-lived Soil Erosion Service (SES), to the Soil Conservation Service (SCS), to today's Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS). For the NRCS's view of their own history, visit their storyboard.
Here is the layout of the book:
Introduction - The Nature of Governance
Chapter 1 - Grounds for Action
Chapter 2 - The Great Transformation
Chapter 3 - Grasstops Development
Chapter 4 - Paying for Conservation
Chapter 5 - In the Hands of the Farm Barron
Chapter 6 - Rude Awakenings
Epilogue - Ghost Farms
Essentially, the chapters start with setting up the case for need for conservation and move towards the future - "Ghost Farms". The SES and SCS were New Deal programs born out of the Dust Bowl and the perceived view that we, as a country, needed to do something about soil erosion. Better understanding how erosion worked and how to combat it meant we needed basic science and experimentation. As part of this, the Coon Creek watershed was selected as one of two watershed demonstration projects by the SES as they worked with the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) in the watershed. First, it is important to acknowledge that this watershed-based - rather than county-based - approach was rather innovative. They recognized that erosion and streams do not know political boundaries.
It was also not by chance that the Coon Creek watershed was selected. The scope of the alteration of valleys and their streams in the Driftless Area are pretty much incomprehensible today - as I have written about in a few posts about stream corridors, original vegetation, and how the Driftless Area was reborn after a history of degradation. I think we too often are not mindful of how much we have altered our landscape. For more about the Coon Valley project and Aldo Leopold's work on the project, visit Lessons from Coon Valley and watch the video below.
The book made several more references to the Driftless Area, including the role of the Small Watershed Program (PL566) which is a current topic of conversation as the dams paid for through PL566 are nearing - or past - their life expectancies. The dam decommissioning process and the surrounding discussion is ongoing and will likely make almost nobody happy whenever it concludes. Will that be the result of a good compromise, a flawed process , or maybe both? The West Fork and Coon Creek watersheds were the first to consider removing PL566 dams - largely due to having five dam failures in the 2018 floods. Other watersheds and counties will be dealing with similar issues soon, if they are not already.
Another topic from the book that I found most interesting was how many political decisions - who got included and, more importantly, who did not - were tied to racism of the time. Landowners - but not sharecroppers - were often eligible for federal payments.
Follow the Money
This, for me, was the lesson of the book. Each time a new program was proposed, businesses, politicians, and farmers found a way to "get their share". Along with this came "branding", for lack of a better term. What we call "conservation" is quite often more about increasing production and the value of the land and less about actual environmental conservation. Much of this conservation fell short of its intended goals. For example, soil erosion rates in the 1960's and 70's, in some cases, exceeded those of the Dust Bowl era. These programs were often terribly expensive. Often, the cost of implementing the practice cost more than did the acre of land it was applied to. And, in many cases, practices were both not effective and expensive. That is not to say that there were not successes.
Our landscape today has fewer farms that are larger in acreage. Is this a result of political decisions and NRCS policies, or an inevitability in modern society? As Earl Butz, Secretary of Agriculture in the 1970's, told farmers - "Get big or get out" - has largely come true. Conversely, the Driftless Area is also a center for organic farming and a place where smaller farms are able to thrive - or at least survive. Reading about how we got to where we are - "conservation tillage" dependent upon agro-chemials and expensive, precision machinery - is a story about our past and decisions that were made. We grow more food, on fewer acres, with many fewer people, than we ever have. That is a success story, at least economically, but for shrinking number of people.
The book was well worth the time it took me to read it - though it is not what one would call a page turner. It is a densely written book that is full of support - it is an academic history book. I am certainly more informed about the history of agriculture in our country and how agriculture and "conservation" has evolved. If you are wanting to become more familiar with the history of the NRCS and how politics influenced today's agricultural world, it is well worth the read.
Agriculture in the Driftless Area
The Driftless landscape is an agrarian landscape. No force - other than many millions of years of flowing water - has done more to shape the Driftless landscape than has agriculture. I do not write this as a criticism but rather as a fact of life. Outside the steepest of bluffs, you probably can not find a place in the Driftless Area that is unspoiled by the plow and the soil erosion that comes with it. Agricultural practices sent so much sediment into Driftless Area valleys that today we simply have little ability to think of a landscape without this erosion having occurred. Our streams and their valleys are anything but natural.
Conditions in the Driftless Area and elsewhere are much improved - but at the same time, we have a ways to go. The topography of the Driftless Area makes today's standard large-scale farming rather difficult, particularly in the valleys. This is at least part of the explanation for how organic farming became so much more prevalent here than in most places. We are seeing fewer dairy farms, more beef grazing operations. As is the trend around Wisconsin and much of the country, alfalfa and hay have largely been replaced with row crops - corn and soybeans. Gone too are the tobacco fields, that for many years, kept both large and small farms afloat (Nygren writes about the economics and consequences of this). As I have mentioned previously, Wisconsin has unfortunately been a leader in removing acreage from the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), another NRCS program. Quite often I am recognizing contour fields being combined into larger fields and grassed waterways becoming less common. And, of course, CAFOs are becoming more common. Maybe these observations are simply a reflection of the economics of modern agriculture?
A Few Unpopular Opinions
Below are a few possibly quite unpopular opinions that are mine - and mine alone - that the book brought to the forefront for me. By this time, you may have forgotten that this is a fly fishing blog, but what happens on the landscape affects our fishing and nothing affects fishing in the Driftless more than agriculture.
Land Stewardship
Being a farmer does not make you a steward of the land. Many farmers are great stewards of the land, while many are not. I imagine this has always been the case. I can point you to no shortage of places that could benefit from a little more land stewardship. We have a pretty long history of poor stewardship.
I have to assume that economics play a large role in land stewardship and the ability to feel like you do not have to extract every dollar you can from the land. Of course, there are often state and federal programs to help pay for land stewarship. In some cases, through government programs, it is rather profitable to not grow crops. This, in my opinion, is a worthwhile role of government. Which leads me to my next, and probably least popular point.
U.S. Agriculture is "Socialism"
There is probably no part of our society that is more "socialistic" than is agriculture. I am not saying that as a pejorative, rather that "the government" has an effect on pretty much every bit of agriculture. Agriculture in the United States is not "free market", nor, I would argue, can it be. While it certainly has not felt this way lately, we in the United States pay the smallest portion of our income on food of any country (source). United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) subsidies help keep food prices artifcially low which many farmers bemoan. At the same time, subsidies help to stabilize the system and prevent against market crashes which would cause great havoc.
US agriculture is not socialism in that the land is owned by individuals and not the state but more socialism in the common misuse of the term - a place where government has a large, some would say, outsized influence. Aside from the "military-industrial complex", there are few parts of the US economy where the government has a larger influence than it does on agriculture.
One of the common themes of Nygren's book is farmers desire for the government to have little regulatory oversight of agricultural production and "conservation". Conservation has been voluntary - supported by the "carrot" of programs to pay landowners for their conservation efforts - rather than the "stick" of regulation. We can debate the results of voluntary conservation. Conservation - by its definition - is for societal good. Again, calling conservation socialism is a bastardization of the idea of "socialism".
Farming is Difficult!
This is probably less controversial than the two points above - farming is hard, and getting harder. The author ends the book with an epilogue titled, "Ghost Farms" as sort of a look to the future. That title comes from an episode of The Magic School Bus of the same name. "Ghost farms", are where very few people are necessary because "precision agriculture" and a plethora of information will make farms both more efficient and less work. Let the chemicals do the work! Genetically modified "Roundup Read" crops are common - in fact, over 80% of U.S. soybeans are Roundup Ready and many other crops are moving in that direction. With self-driving tractors and automatic milking systems, how many farmers will be necessary per farm? While seemingly futuristic, we are not too far from that future, though we are probably further from it in much of the Driftless Area than elsewhere. Fewer people have been growing more food than ever - a trend that is likely to continue.
The economics of farming are difficult and most farms have a lot of money tied up in land and equipment. Farmers have to be agronomists and accountants. They have to be able to use technology, adjust to changing markets and climates, and they have to be able to take advantage of what subsidies and other government program they can. And they have to be a little lucky - one bit of weather at the wrong time can ruin everything. We are a bit unique in the Driftless in that our farms seem to be growing more slowly than elsewhere (I have no data to support that...). Even that seems to be a case of the valleys vs. the ridge tops. Since the 2018 floods, I am seeing more land out of production in the valleys as the risk of flooding and cost to repair fences and other infrastructure is too great to justify. This is likely coupled with the fact that land in the valleys is bought for recreational purposes.
There is little simple about this topic. I wrote for the 6 to 10 minute read time I generally shoot for. I could go on but I think I got my ideas across. The story of the history of agriculture and conservation in the United States is a complex one. Nygren's book is a great place to get started. As I read the book, I wondered how much of where we are is somewhat inevitable and shaped by market forces and how much has been shaped by political decisions over time?
Thank you for the realistic assessment of the situation. Interesting to trace the lineage of conservation efforts. And you shed some light on situations I see everyday