The Broken Promise of Agricultural Progress: An Environmental History

230 Pages·2014·9.092 MB·English

by  Cameron Muir

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THE BROKEN PROMISE OF
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0 AGRICULTURAL PROGRESS
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7: The question of food and our reliance on the global agricultural system has become
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t one of the defining public concerns of the twenty-first century. Ecological disorder
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] and inequity is at the heart of our food system. This thoughtful and confronting
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r book tells the story of how the development of modern agriculture promised
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br ecological and social stability but instead descended into dysfunction. Contributing
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L to knowledge in environm ental, cultural and agricultural histories, it explores how
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i people have tried to live in the aftermath of ‘ecological imperialism’.
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m The Broken Promise of Agricultural Progress: An environmental history journeys to
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l the dry inland plains of Australia where European ideas and agricultural technologies
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C clashed with a volatile and taunting country that resisted attempts to subdue and
h transform it for the supply of global markets. Its wide-ranging narrative puts gritty
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it local detail in its global context to tell the story of how cultural anxieties about
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civilisation, population and race, shaped agriculture in the twentieth century. It
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o ranges from isolated experiment farms to nutrition science at the League of Nations,
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t from local landholders to high-profile moral crusaders, including an Australian apricot
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r grower who met Franklin D. Roosevelt and almost fed the world.
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v This book will be useful to undergraduates and postgraduates on courses
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U examining international comparisons of nineteenth- and twentieth-century agri-
e culture, as well as those studying colonial development and settler societies. It will
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d Cameron Muir is Australian Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow at the
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d Australian National University and the National Museum of Australia. From 2013
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o to 2014, he was Fellow at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society,
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n Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany, and a visiting scholar at the
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o University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Center for Culture, History, and Environment
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(CHE), part of the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, USA.
7 ‘Cameron Muir has produced a brilliant, far-reaching book that combines
1 environmental and agricultural approaches to urgent questions about food politics
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2 and land management. This is a terrific work of historically textured, geographic-
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r ally immersed storytelling that also has a strong conceptual payoff in debunking
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u resilient myths about what it would take to feed the world. Muir’s conclusions
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e will reverberate across disciplines and national borders.’
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0 Rob Nixon, University of Wisconsin, USA
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5 ‘In his gripping account of the failures of European agriculture on the western
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7 plains of New South Wales, Cameron Muir challenges our assumptions about the
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t social and environmental outcomes of agricultural progress. How can global food
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a Muir’s perceptive and fresh analysis alerts us to why the lessons of the past are so
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a Kate Darian-Smith, University of Melbourne, Australia
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ROUTLEDGE ENVIRONMENTAL HUMANITIES
Series editors: Iain McCalman and Libby Robin
7 Editorial Board
1 Christina Alt, St Andrews University, UK
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2 Alison Bashford, University of Cambridge, UK
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r Peter Coates, University of Bristol, UK
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u Thom van Dooren, University of New South Wales, Australia
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e Georgina Endfield, University of Nottingham, UK
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0 Jodi Frawley, University of Sydney, Australia
6 2 Andrea Gaynor, The University of Western Australia, Australia
5 Tom Lynch, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, USA
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0 Jennifer Newell, American Museum of Natural History, New York, USA
at Simon Pooley, Imperial College London, UK
y] Sandra Swart, Stellenbosch University, South Africa
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a Ann Waltner, University of Minnesota, USA
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i Paul Warde, University of East Anglia, UK
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a Jessica Weir, University of Western Sydney, Australia
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u International Advisory Board
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o William Beinart, University of Oxford, UK
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h Jane Carruthers, University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa
is Dipesh Chakrabarty, University of Chicago, USA
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r Paul Holm, Trinity College, Dublin, Republic of Ireland
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f Shen Hou, Renmin University of China, Beijing
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y Rob Nixon, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA
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i Pauline Phemister, Institute of Advanced Studies in the Humanities,
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e University of Edinburgh, UK
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ni Deborah Bird Rose, University of New South Wales, Australia
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Sverker Sorlin, KTH Environmental Humanities Laboratory, Royal Institute
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h of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden
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[ Helmuth Trischler, Deutsches Museum, Munich and Co-Director, Rachel
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b Carson Center, LMU Munich University, Germany
d Mary Evelyn Tucker, Yale University, USA
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7 The Routledge Environmental Humanities series is an original and inspiring venture
1 recognising that today’s world agricultural and water crises, ocean pollution and
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2 resource depletion, global warming from greenhouse gases, urban sprawl, over-
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r population, food insecurity and environmental justice are all crises of culture.
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u The reality of understanding and finding adaptive solutions to our present and
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e future environmental challenges has shifted the epicentre of environmental studies
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0 away from an exclusively scientific and technological framework to one that depends
2 on the human-focused disciplines and ideas of the humanities and allied social
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5 sciences.
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0 We thus welcome book proposals from all humanities and social sciences
at disciplines for an inclusive and interdisciplinary series. We favour manuscripts aimed
y] at an international readership and written in a lively and accessible style. The
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a readership comprises scholars and students from the humanities and social sciences
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i and thoughtful readers concerned about the human dimensions of environmental
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a change.
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o Rethinking Invasion Ecologies from the Environmental Humanities
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h Jodi Frawley and Iain McCalman
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THE BROKEN PROMISE
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ear thscan
OR Routledge
GDELTU Taylor & Francis Group from routledge
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LONDON AND NEW YORK
7 First published 2014
1 by Routledge
0 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
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y and by Routledge
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a 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
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br Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
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F © 2014 Cameron Muir
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2 The right of Cameron Muir to be identified as author of this work has
6 been asserted by him/her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
5 Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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0 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
t or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
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] now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording,
y or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
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a writing from the publishers.
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i British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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bi Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
m Muir, Cameron.
u The broken promise of agricultural progress: an environmental history/
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o Cameron Muir.
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pages cm
h Includes bibliographical references and index.
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i 1. Agriculture – Environmental aspects – Australia. 2. Agricultural
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ri ecology – Australia. 3. Soil management – Australia. 4. Soil degradation
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– Australia. I. Title.
of S589.76.A8M85 2014
y 630.994—dc23
it 2013045401
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v ISBN13: 978-0-415-73157-7 (hbk)
ni ISBN13: 978-0-415-73158-4 (pbk)
U ISBN13: 978-1-315-84967-6 (ebk)
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h Typeset in Bembo and Stone Sans by
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[ Florence Production Ltd, Stoodleigh, Devon, UK
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CONTENTS
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i List of figures xi
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a Foreword xiii
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b Acknowledgements xv
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Prologue xvii
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is Introduction 1
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B 1 Hooves 9
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y 2 Bores 38
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rs 3 Scrub 62
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ni 4 Wheat 89
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e 5 Dust 109
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[ 6 Reeds 139
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d 7 Cotton 164
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d Conclusion 184
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n Epilogue 188
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Bibliography 192
Index 207