Prairie Lives: The Changing Face of Farming

George Jackson is a retired professional agrologist.

The author is a photo-journalist and a fourth-generation member of a prairie farm family. Following several years of media work in the city, she returned to the farm. This book is her documentation of prairie agriculture as she sees it today.

Prairie Lives provides a first-hand view of certain sectors of farming — for example, the beginning small farm, the farm facing bankruptcy, the organic, natural, cooperative, or corporate farm. But there is still a middle group out there, the majority of farmers, whose message is not included in this book. Although it is possible that the methods used by some mentioned in this book will be the model for successful prairie farm operation in the future, the reader must recognize the limited basis of the message.

Each person interviewed is given a two-page spread. Quotations from many of those interviewed and the author’s introductions to each chapter are critical of prairie farming today, its practices and trends. These people, including the author, would like to stop the clock, if not turn it back to “better days.”

Prairie Lives is a useful documentation of the problems that some prairie farmers are facing in the eighties. It is a coffeetable rather than a bedside book, and it should serve as a useful historical record of the changing face of farming in the eighties.