I recently returned from a trip to the middle of Michigan and have two words to share: corn + soy. These two words are particularly striking because I work in the dairy industry and these two crops seem to be, basically, feeding that whole system.
While in Michigan, I traveled to a small farm town somewhere between Detroit and Lansing. Every field I saw was planted with either of these crops (a bit of wheat as well). Every field was vast and beautiful (no lie). Enormous, gentle, peaceful and just a tad eerie.
When I got out of the car and walked closer to one corn field, I saw that not a weed grew between the stalks. Even at the field's edge, with roadside invasives growing in dense bunches only inches away, the ground was cleansed, a perfect plateau from which tame green protruded. This ground had not been weeded by hand.
It was once my dream to move to the Heartland because that's where I believed we could afford to buy farm land. Now, with the closing of car manufactures and the economy in general, affordability couldn't be more true. One person told me that lakeside cabins there are selling for $16,000.
So why don't we move there? Why doesn't every young person craving a connection to the land move there? Why aren't the urban poor and landless immigrants scampering for a piece of Michigan? For a small house that only costs $16,000? I have guesses but I have no answer. The Heartland is empty and depressed yet abundant and beautiful.
2 comments:
I know I've thought about the midwest before; it's the land of my ancestors (at one point on their various sojourns west), the land is cheap, there are good things to be said about rural midwestern culture (along with the bad), and it is beautiful. For this Western gal, though, the long cold winters are nothing I would intentionally choose for the rest (or even a good chunk) of my life.
My maternal grandparents and my father moved to California from the midwest and fell in love with CA. I grew up here, have lived several really different places, and always fall back in love with it when I come back. Culturally, familially, geographically, climatically, this is home.
That's this gal's story. Even though those rolling grasslands and cheap cabins have their appeal, I'm sticking to home.
that corn and soy, on a statistical probability alone, are more than likely GM0's.
There is no one to buy whatever it is you would grow or produce in the midwest. So you would be tossed right back into the same predicament of your midwest predecessors, transporting your goods far and wide just to scrape by. I think thats the answer to why every kid wanting a connection to the land is NOT flocking to the midwest.
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