Ramp Hollow

by Steven Stoll

  3.  Kains, Five Acres and Independence; Hall, Three Acres and Liberty; Borsodi, Flight from the City.

    4.  Zimmerman, “Discussion,” 84; Borsodi, Flight from the City, 1–4.

    5.  Indians had their own Subsistence Homestead Authority, established in 1934 and managed by the Department of the Interior. Collier attempted a compassionate paternalism, allowing Indians to hold their dances and manage their own affairs, but he also imposed the government in the slaughter of Navajo sheep and goats, part of a misguided effort at range management. See Collier, “The Fate of the Navajos: What Will Oil Money Do to the Greatest of Indian Tribes?,” Sunset Magazine, January 1924, quoted in Weisiger, Dreaming of Sheep in Navajo Country, 23. Twelve Southerners, I’ll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition, xlii–xlv, l–liii.

    6.  Nearing and Nearing, The Good Life, intro. and chap. 2, quoted in American Georgics, 316–19.

    7.  Wickard v. Filburn, vol. 317, U.S. Reports, 111 (1942). The case is usually cited as establishing precedent for widening the constitutional power of the United States to regulate interstate commerce. The case continues to anger those who favor restricted government powers, though libertarians never seem to recognize capitalism as a distinct force that acts through government. See the Filburn Foundation, http://thefilburnfoundation.com/index.html.

    8.  Lewis, “Economic Development with Unlimited Supplies of Labor,” 181.

    9.  Rosenstein-Rodan quoted in Cullather, Hungry World, 147.

  10.  Sauer, Agricultural Origins and Dispersals, 2.

  11.  Grove, Green Imperialism, 181–85; “Col. Chappell’s Address,” Papers Published by Order of the Agricultural Society of South Carolina, 6–8, 12–17. For reaction to swidden in the United States, see Stoll, Larding the Lean Earth, 128–30.

  12.  “Even within anthropology, the discipline most oriented towards non-western societies,” notes Michael Dove, “traditional agriculture had been dismissed as being of minor relevance or importance.” See Dove’s essay on Conklin: http://cseas.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/Harold%20C%20Conklin_Michael%20Dove_AAA%202016.pdf.

  13.  For this and the previous paragraph, I used Conklin, Hanunóo Agriculture, 152–55; Cullather, “Miracles of Modernization: The Green Revolution and the Apotheosis of Technology,” 233, 238–39. And see Hill, “The Human Factor in Economic Development,” and Brzezinski, “The Politics of Underdevelopment,” 57–59, both cited by Cullather. I used the FAO’s crop statistics database and converted hectograms to U.S. tons per hectare: www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QC. For yields per hectare in Kalimantan, Indonesia, I used Dove’s number of about 1,500 liters per hectare. I then converted volume to weight, using uncooked brown rice (1 liter = 1.76 pounds). This gave me 2,640 pounds per hectare, or 1.3 U.S. short tons. Dove, Swidden Agriculture in Indonesia, 289.

  14.  The cultural anthropologist Renato Rosaldo writes of Conklin and his accomplishment: “The ethnographer emerges as an advocate for the Hanunóo and as a critic of dominant national policy … The tacit implications of his article reflect a politics grounded in notions of human well-being and ecological concern.” Rosaldo, Culture and Truth, 185–86.

  15.  Schultz, Transforming Traditional Agriculture, 53–66. Schultz quotes the Chicago economist Jacob Viner: “I find it impossible to conceive of a farm of any kind on which … it would not be possible, by known methods, to obtain some addition to the crop by using additional labor.” Schultz, Transforming Traditional Agriculture, 60. Netting ignores the “zero-value” doctrine and Schultz. Instead, he focuses on the ways that agrarian people allocate labor in differing population conditions. See Netting, Smallholder, Householder, 108–10.

  16.  Schultz, Transforming Traditional Agriculture, 33–35.

  17.  Sahlins’s argument might apply to hunter-gatherer societies during the warm and stable Holocene, but not to earlier epochs. Life during the Ice Age and the Younger Dryas was extraordinarily hard. For a description of these and other climate events and how they affected early humans, see Brooke, Climate Change and the Course of Global History.

  18.  Grant, “Marginal Men,” 121. Grant was best known for his term as the third director of the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund, or UNICEF. President Bill Clinton presented him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1994.

  19.  Ibid., 115–19.

  20.  Williams, Appalachia, 253.

  21.  Rochester, Why Farmers Are Poor, 68–69.

  22.  “Moonshiners Kill Second Dry Raider, Hold Off Big Posse,” New York Times, December 11, 1922. “The Mountain Moonshiner,” Forest and Stream, November 10, 1906.

  23.  Black, Mather, and Sanders, “Standards of Living in Appalachia.”

  24.  Caudill, Night Comes to the Cumberlands, 12–13, 27, 103–107, 306, 311. Williams, Appalachia, 325. Caudill quoted in New York Times, October 20, 1963. For a less sympathetic view, see Homer Bigart, “Kentucky Miners: A Grim Winter,” New York Times, October 20, 1963. Also see Look Magazine, August 9, 1962.

  25.  Homer Bigart, “U.S. Reveals Plan to Fight Appalachian Poverty,” New York Times, November 13, 1963. On the volunteers and ARC, see Kiffmeyer, Reformers to Radicals.

  26.  Appalachian Regional Commission, Report, 4–7.

  27.  Gaventa and Horton, “Land Ownership Patterns and Their Impacts on Appalachian Communities,” 164–65.

  28.  Gaventa, Power and Powerlessness, 163–64, 210–11.

  29.  Appalachian Regional Commission, Performance and Accountability Report; Ziliak, “The Appalachian Regional Development Act and Economic Change,” 16–18; Fickey and Samers, “Developing Appalachia,” 124.

  30.  Salstrom, “More About ‘The Impact of Limited Economic Imagination’ on Appalachia’s Development,” 10.

  31.  Julian Martin, from his website: http://wildwonderfulwv.us/julian/. I have altered the punctuation in a few places.

  32.  Steven Mufson, “New Owner of Freedom Industries Must Face Fallout of West Virginia Chemical Spill,” Washington Post, January 17, 2014, www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/new-owner-of-freedom-industries-must-face-fallout-of-west-virginia-chemical-spill/2014/01/17/77b1a572-7df2-11e3-93c1-0e888170b723_story.html?utm_term=.61e5fd34d0dc.

  33.  “No metallurgical process developed in the 20th century compares with that of froth flotation and the profound effect it had on the mineral industry.” Fuerstenau, “A Century of Developments in the Chemistry of Flotation Processing,” 3. Blum, “Our Toxicity Experiment in West Virginia.” Occupational Health Guidelines, www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/81-123/pdfs/0407.pdf.

  34.  Mufson, “New Owner of Freedom Industries Must Face Fallout of West Virginia Chemical Spill,” Washington Post, January 17, 2014. Lottermoser, Mine Wastes, 207.

  35.  Interview with Senator Jay Rockefeller, National Public Radio (February 10, 2014). Shelley Moore Capito (R), a member of the House in 2014, was elected that year to replace Rockefeller, who is also a former governor of West Virginia.

  36.  “HR2218 Fails to Protect Health and Safety,” earthjustice.org; “HR2218,” govtrack.us.

  37.  Aboveground Storage Tank Act. West Virginia Senate Bill No. 373. Passed March 8, 2014. Amending Aboveground Storage Tank Act. West Virginia Senate Bill No. 423. Passed March 14, 2015. www.dep.wv.gov/WWE/abovegroundstoragetanks/Documents/WVCode2230.pdf. Ward, “Chemical Tank Safety Rollback Passes House.”

  38.  Resnikoff, “Congress Passes $8.7 Billion Food Stamp Cut,” MSNBC, February 4, 2013, www.msnbc.com/msnbc/congress-passes-farm-bill-food-stamp-cuts#50092. The report referring to 2017 comes from the International Business Times, May 16, 2016, www.ibtimes.com/paul-ryan-gop-eye-23b-food-stamp-cuts-2017-budget-2369301. In the Senate, Joe Manchin (D) voted in favor of the Agriculture Reform, Food, and Jobs Act of 2013. Jay Rockefeller (D) did not vote. www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=113&
session=2&vote=00020#name. For the percentages of households receiving SNAP benefits, see www.governing.com/gov-data/food-stamp-snap-benefits-enrollment-participation-totals-map.html.

  39.  Waggoner, “I’m from West Virginia and I’ve Got Something to Say About the Chemical Spill”; Martin quoted in Salstrom, “Cash Is a Four-Letter Word,” 242–44.

  40.  Anthracite emits 228.6 pounds of CO2 per million British thermal units. Bituminous emits 205.7. Natural gas emits 117. www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=73&t=11. “Coal-to-Gas Plant Conversions in the U.S.” www.power-eng.com/articles/print/volume-119/issue-6/features/coal-to-gas-plant-conversions-in-the-u-s.html.

  41.  Wyoming delivered 390 million tons in the same year, but its production is also declining. See Nathan Vardi, “U.S. Coal Company Alpha Natural Resources Files for Bankruptcy,” Forbes, August 3, 2015: www.forbes.com/sites/nathanvardi/2015/08/03/u-s-coal-company-alpha-natural-resources-files-for-bankruptcy/. National employment in the coal industry fell by 10 percent between 2012 and 2013. U.S. Energy Information Administration, “Annual Coal Report, Table 1. Coal Production and Number of Mines … 2013 and 2012,” December 1, 2015: www.eia.gov/coal/annual/index.cfm.

  42.  On the state’s population, see West Virginia Health Statistics Center, Statistical Brief Number 8, www.wvdhhr.org/bph/hsc/pubs/briefs/008/default.htm. On Walmart, see Lilly and Todd, “What Happens When Walmart Closes in One Coal Community?” On food deserts, see Lilly and Todd, “What Would You Do If Your Grocery Store Disappeared?”; Walsh, “Alienated and Angry, Coal Miners See Donald Trump as Their Only Choice.”

  43.  Amy Arnett, “On the Map: West Virginia’s Largest Employers by County,” West Virginia Executive, November 21, 2014: www.wvexecutive.com/west-virginias-largest-employers; Census of the United States (2010); “Number of Poor West Virginians Remains High,” www.wvpolicy.org/number-of-poor-west-virginians-remains-high-increase-in-children-living-in-poverty; Dennis Sadowski, “Despite Long Mining History Poverty Straps Many in West Virginia, National Catholic Reporter, November 4, 2014: www.ncronline.org/blogs/eco-catholic/despite-long-mining-history-poverty-straps-many-west-virginia; “State of American Well-Being,” Gallo-Healthways Well-Being Index, www.well-being.com.

  44.  For an argument in favor of collective identities in the service of an ethical politics, see Critchley, Infinitely Demanding. I have especially learned from David Whisnant’s “Developments in the Appalachian Identity Movement,” which though published in 1980 still resonates. “At its worst … regional identification is an isolationist impulse.” He deconstructs an essentialist mountain identity. And yet, “The political value of regional identity lies in its usefulness as a basis for broad solidarity and coalition.”

  45.  In the words of two historians, “Making visible activities that neoliberalism renders invisible expands the range of ideas for producing social livelihoods and economic development.” Fickey and Samers, “Developing Appalachia,” 123.

  46.  Appalachian Voices is one such organization. The Reclaim Act is H.R. 4456, 114th Congress. Introduced in the House in February 2016.

  47.  Ostrom (1933–2012) shared the Nobel Prize with Oliver E. Williamson. The act would rely on Ostrom’s Governing the Commons. For design principles, see pages 90–101.

  48.  On corporate subsidies, Niraj Chokshi, “The United States of Subsidies,” Washington Post, March 18, 2015: www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2015/03/17/the-united-states-of-subsidies-the-biggest-corporate-winners-in-each-state/?utm_term=.314361798972.

  49.  Barnwell, The Face of Appalachia, 121, 122, 126. The project is Tending the Commons: Folklife and Landscape in Southern West Virginia in cooperation with the Coal River Folklife Project and the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. Dave Baily interviewed by Mary Hufford on April 12, 1996 (AFC 1999/008), http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.afc/afccmns.104007; Virgil Jarrell interviewed by Mary Hufford on May 23, 1996 (AFC 1999/008), http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.afc/afccmns.117004.

  50.  Hardin, “Tragedy of the Commons.”

  51.  According to Richard Judd, “These local common resource regimes established two central principles for the emerging New England conservation tradition: communities bore collective responsibility for managing their resources in a productive fashion, and they were to allocate these resources equitably.” Judd, Common Lands, Common People, 7–8, 41–45; Acheson, Capturing the Commons, 206; Greer, “Commons and Enclosure in the Colonization of North America.”

  52.  Newfont, Blue Ridge Commons, 276.

  53.  Ibid.

  54.  Immerwahr, Thinking Small.

  55.  Vance, Hillbilly Elegy, 148–49, 206.

  56.  Roger Coke, England’s Improvements, quoted in Appleby, Economic Thought and Ideology, 253.

  57.  United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, Bioenergy and Food Security Criteria and Indicators, “Markala Sugar Project,” www.fao.org/bioenergy/31530-0af3706e7240fe92a72ca083cf834cce5.pdf.

  58.  Quoted in Berkeley and Lewat, Land Rush.

  59.  De Schutter, “How Not to Think of Land-Grabbing,” 252.

  60.  On speculation as to the cause of the food crisis of 2008, see Kaufman, “The Food Bubble.”

  61.  Chris Arsenault, “Mali’s Land Deal with the Devil—Letter from Markala,” Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, May 14, 2015, http://pulitzercenter.org/reporting/malis-land-deal-devil-letter-markala. Dispossessed woman quoted in Berkeley and Lewat, Land Rush. NGO’s statement and account from Brautigam, Will Africa Feed China?, 87.

  62.  Berkeley and Lewat, Land Rush; MacFarquhar, “African Farmers Displaced as Investors Move In,” New York Times, December 21, 2010.

  63.  The quotation is from Des Sheehy, chief information officer at Duxton, a private equity fund. Ann White, “African Farming Is the New Frontier for Brave Investors,” The Telegraph, June 14, 2014, www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/10901154/African-farming-is-the-new-frontier-for-brave-investors.html. Duxton also buys and sells water.

  64.  “Development Goals and Strategies,” www.worldbank.org/depweb/english/beyond/beyondco/beg_17.pdf, 123.

  65.  In an interview for Land Rush, Nedelcovych notes that the shea trees would have been replanted in new locations. But young trees don’t fruit for a number of years, creating a lapse in income.

  66.  Moudio, “Shea Butter Nourishes Opportunities for African Women.” For the Global Shea Alliance, see www.globalshea.com. Joan Martinez-Alier explains it this way: “Economic security refers, in the first instance, to the livelihood or subsistence of humans. While in many past societies material provisioning was secured outside the market, in today’s society income earned in the market appears to be the main means of acquisition of the essentials for human livelihood.” Martinez-Alier, “The Environmentalism of the Poor,” 42.

  67.  De Schutter served from 2008 to 2014. At this writing, he teaches at Columbia University.

  68.  For this and the previous paragraph, see De Schutter, “How Not to Think of Land-Grabbing,” 254–57.

  69.  Nwanze, “Viewpoint: Smallholders Can Feed the World.” Wegner and Zwart, Who Will Feed the World, Oxfam Research Report, April 2011. According to a World Bank report, “Seventy-five percent of the world’s poor are rural, and most are engaged in farming. The need for more and better investment in agriculture to reduce poverty, increase economic growth, and promote environmental sustainability was already clear when there were ‘only’ 830 million hungry people before the food price rise.” World Bank, Rising Global Interest in Farmland: Can It Yield Sustainable and Equitable Benefits? (2011).

  70.  Roy, Walking with the Comrades, 214.

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

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