Abstract
We examined patterns of shifting cropland cultivation in the US Great Plains from the dust bowl to the beginning of the twenty-first century, by comparing land-cover data from 400 sample sites across the region from the 1930s, 1950s, 1970s, 1990s and 2000s. The small area land-cover data were nested within 50 target counties across the region. To understand the use of marginal land for cultivation since the Great Depression, we argue, requires consideration of the long term dynamics of demography, technology and policy. We draw on these historical dynamics, and their interactions with programs aimed at reducing environmental impacts of agriculture, to tell the story of how and when marginal lands have been brought into use. In a multilevel panel design, macro- and micro-level covariates were used to predict levels of encroachment on marginal soils. We conclude that land retirement programs (like the Conservation Reserve Program) have had a generally stabilizing effect on the micro-level patterns of land use in recent decades, but that increased levels of encroachment on marginal soils and native grassland remain a problem in areas with higher or increasing population densities.
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Notes
Several counties experienced substantial population increases over the period between 1940 and 2000, of 25,000 or more residents, because of their proximity to metropolitan areas. Adams and Arapahoe Counties in Colorado are just east of Denver, Weld County, Colorado, is east of Boulder and Fort Collins, Clay County, Minnesota, and Cass County, North Dakota, surround the city of Fargo, Grand Forks County, North Dakota, contains the city of Grand Forks, Kingfisher and Canadian County, Oklahoma, are just west of Oklahoma City, and Cascade County, Montana, is home to the city of Great Falls.
Our standard of interpretation sets a conservative standard consistent with the historical baseline of practice in the late 1930 s, when center pivot or other groundwater technologies were not in use, and we maintain this metric throughout the period observed. It is a standard that imposes a kind of taxonomic assessment on the patterns of change rather than assessing the on-the-ground adjustments and innovations that farm operators used to expand cultivation.
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Acknowledgments
This publication was made possible by Grant Number R01 HD033554 from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not reflect the views of the NICHD. The authors are grateful to the many undergraduate students who worked on the aerial photograph interpretation, for archival research at the National Archives performed by then Ph.D. candidate (at the University of Maryland) Jacqueline Waite (to identify images from the 1930s photograph maps), the coordination and leadership of project manager Rachel Kornak at the University of Michigan, and for statistical advice, in recommending the hybrid approach, we thank Glenn D. Deane, Professor of Sociology, State University of New York, Albany.
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Sylvester, K.M., Gutmann, M.P. & Brown, D.G. At the margins: agriculture, subsidies and the shifting fate of North America’s native grassland. Popul Environ 37, 362–390 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11111-015-0242-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11111-015-0242-7