The rural Midwest, foreign policy, and the ways we do history

Scholars have long challenged the common assumption of midwestern isolationism. In Global Heartland, historian Peter Simons reorients the way we look at the critical period in US history from the 1930s through 1950s, showing how farmers across the Midwest understood their work as contributing to an era of international upheaval, geographical reimagination, and global ecological thinking. Here, Simons is joined in conversation with Michael Lansing about the rural heartland, US foreign policy, and the changing and multidisciplinary ways that scholars approach history.

Peter Simons is a historian in upstate New York and author of Global Heartland: Cultivating the American Century on the Midwestern Farm.

Michael Lansing is a professor of history at Augsburg University and author of Insurgent Democracy: The Nonpartisan League in North American Politics. 

EPISODE REFERENCES:

Arthur Vandenberg: The Man in the Middle of the American Century / Hendrik Meijer

The Heartland: An American History / Kristin Hoganson

Grasslands Grown: Creating Place on the US Northern Plains and Canadian Prairies / Molly P. Rozum

Back East: How Westerners Invented a Region / Flannery Burke

Supermarket USA: Food and Power in the Cold War Farms Race / Shane Hamilton

Nuclear Country: The Origins of the Rural New Right / Catherine McNicol Stock

Lester E. Helland Papers, Wisconsin Veterans Museum, Madison

Praise for the book:

“From Lend-Lease to Food for Peace, Global Heartland reveals how rural Midwesterners came to see their farms as being at the heart of the world.”
—Kristin Hoganson

“This rich and revealing book transforms the way we think about the rural heartland.”
—Michael Lansing

Global Heartland: Cultivating the American Century on the Midwestern Farm by Peter Simons is available from University of Minnesota Press.

Episode Transcript

Peter Simons (00:08):
My argument is that the farmers are ultimately
the ones driving a lot of thispolicy and that everyone else is
is catching up.

Michael Lansing (00:16):
The power of place continues even as we bring
new ways of seeing and new waysof thinking to the kind of work
that we do as scholarscollectively in this world of
history.

Peter Simons (00:32):
Hi. My name is Peter Simons, I am the author of

Global Heartland (00:36):
Cultivating the American Century on the
Midwestern Farm. It is a bookthat aims to explain how farmers
in the Midwest embraced a globalrole, after World War II. It
explores the transitions both tothe practice of farming but also

(00:57):
their imagination of theirresponsibilities to the world
and helps explain how entrenchedAmerican agriculture has become
by the present day. It issomething that is to be found
globally still.
It is still an influential forcearound the world. And I am so

(01:18):
delighted to have MichaelLansing joining me today to talk
through this book. I have toacknowledge that his book was
very influential to me inunderstanding an earlier era
that leads into this transition.So I couldn't have a better
person to help think throughthis book and and talk through

(01:39):
what its implications are. Thankyou so much, Michael.

Michael Lansing (01:42):
Well, thank you, Peter. Michael Lansing,
professor of history at AugsburgUniversity, and it's a delight
to be here with Peter and totalk about this new and really
innovative book, GlobalHeartland. I'm super excited
because of the ways in whichPeter has put together stories
that are, frankly, generally nottold. And, also, the book brings
ways of seeing that I thinkreally reveals a great deal,

(02:05):
things that both historians havenot known but also Midwesterners
have not known about themselves.And I even found the book to
have some explanatory power, forsome of my own family's stories,
so I'll be anxious to talk withPeter about that, of course.
But more importantly, I thinkGlobal Heartland is a book
that's going to really appeal topeople who try to understand,

(02:26):
not just the rural Midwest butAmerican foreign policy,
especially at these criticalmoments, World War two and the
emergence of the Cold War. Andthe book just does this
incredible job of rethinking,and retelling and reorienting,
the way that we see and how weshould think about that critical
period in the late nineteenthirties, the nineteen forties,

(02:49):
and into the early nineteenfifties. So, Peter, it's an
absolute delight to be here withyou, and congratulations on the
book.

Peter Simons (02:54):
Thank you so much, Michael. I really appreciate it.

Michael Lansing (02:57):
So I guess my first question for you is, how
how did you become interested inthis subject? You know,
Midwestern farmers in the middleof the twentieth century doesn't
necessarily, kind of jump out atpeople right away when they're
casting about for the subject ofa book. And a book, of course,
like this is anywhere from sixto ten years. It's it's it's
such a commitment of time andenergy. How how did you get

(03:21):
interested in this subject andthese people?

Peter Simons (03:23):
I have to admit the the very typical historian's
tale of the the autobiographythat's pretty deeply embedded
into the story, least at leastas a jumping off point. And so I
grew up in an agriculturalcommunity, actually a small city
that had a manufacturer thatdepended on the surrounding

(03:48):
countryside and it was sold offto a series of different Swiss
multinational corporations.Immediately there was this
connection between thiscommunity that felt sort of
closed off from the rest of theworld, obviously wasn't, right?
Very much what was happening inBasel was having an effect on

(04:11):
this little town that I livedin. The fortunes of the small
town sort of rose and declineddepending on what was happening
elsewhere.
So, there was that alwaysembedded in that. I was not from
an agricultural family. So, Iwas always looking from the
outside, trying to understandthis life, the kids that I went

(04:31):
to school with, the the, thepeople that were driving their
tractors down Main Street tobring their grain to the the co
op so it could get shipped offsomewhere. So so that was a very
important part of it. I also hadthe germ of this idea not too
long after the war in Iraqbegan.
And so there was enormoussupport for that in the

(04:53):
community I grew up in. And soagain, was trying to piece
together these people whootherwise at least superficially
don't have much interest in therest of the world. Why are they
so interested in supporting thisoverseas adventure? What
explains their own foreignpolicy? And the final critical
part of it, I didn't think aboutthis until just just a few days
ago.
I realized that this project allcame together in the first

(05:18):
period of time that I lived, fora prolonged period outside of
the Midwest. It enabled me tothink about the people that I
was writing about with a clearhead, I think, than I had
before, that I wasn't embeddedin that in it. I think it was
really the first time that Ithought of Midwesternness in a
way that I hadn't really before.And so there's all this

(05:40):
autobiographical thing. There'sthere's that moment of US
military adventure overseastrying to make sense of that
moment, but then also tracingthat back to this earlier story.
It really started as as a prettytraditional political history.
Arthur Vandenberg was the firstperson who helped me narrate

(06:01):
this because he so clearlyarticulated I had embraced this
particular political position.Pearl Harbor made that
impossible for me to understand.It was such a simplistic, it was
such an enticing explanationthat I knew couldn't be true,
from the face of it. But heallowed for me to sort of sink

(06:22):
my teeth into this oneparticular story and then
unravel that and understand allthe different strands of of what
his constituents were initiallythinking about as they
ostensibly followed him to thisnew pathway.

Michael Lansing (06:35):
This comes as no surprise, of course, because
I think there are a lot ofhistorians who, whether it's
through autobiographicalexperience or just trying to
understand this basic questionof how rural Midwesterners who
seemed on the surface to be, youknow, whatever we want to call
it, progressive in the firsthalf of the twentieth century,

(06:56):
how they come around by the endof the American century and and
seem to be so politicallyconservative. That's a question
that's driving, you know, a lotof the historiography, for my
generation, for your generation.And of course, it's because we
are coming of age in the earlytwo thousands just as you
described. So it's so great tohear that. I'm also really

(07:17):
curious about this entry pointthat you found.
When did you find that entrypoint? Obviously, it was when
you leave the region that youstart to think about it. That's
also so classic. Right? And youget kind of clear eyed and
you're like, oh, oh, and youstart, you know, seeing seeing
things differently.
But, you know, that entry pointof Vandenberg, is that something

(07:40):
that you encountered as anundergraduate, as a graduate
student? Like, where at whatmoment for you did that become
the entry point, this Vandenbergstory?

Peter Simons (07:48):
It was in graduate school. I have to admit that I
don't really know how I cameacross that. You know, it was I
think Hank Meyer was alreadystarting to write articles that
would lead to his book thatrecently came out on on Arthur
Vandenberg. That's such a greatquestion, and and I'm not
exactly sure how I found that. Ipromise to not make this all

(08:12):
autobiographical, but anotherelement of it is I had decided
to enter graduate school becauseafter graduating, as an
undergraduate, I went intopolicy school and I was myself
convinced that I was going to gointo the foreign service.
I guess that was the moment Idiscovered why I really wanted
to be historian because theanswers in policy school were so

(08:33):
simplistic and they were soneat. There was so rarely an
excavation of understanding thecauses behind particular forces.
And so naturally, was was theplace to go. And so I think
Arthur Vandenberg, probablybecause of that policy school,
he was he was sort of floatingin my head. I think there was
some attention that was comingback to him because of the book.

(08:54):
They built a a statue to him inGrand Rapids, Michigan that that
now stands. There was a arediscovery of republican
foreign policy near the thebeginning of of the twenty first
century. So I I think that hadto have some cause, but it's
sort of a it's sort of animmaculate conception now that
you're saying it. I don't Idon't know how Arthur Vandenberg
found me or vice versa how Ifound Arthur Vandenberg. So

(09:15):
that's something that I'll needto I'll need to think about
more.

Michael Lansing (09:19):
Well, I'm just asking because, of course, I
think people always wanna knowhow the book came to be, like
the process of the book. And soI love that you lay out that
entry point for us. Where didthings go from there? Because
your commitment to complicationclearly was, you know, a driving
force for you as you justdescribed. So you encounter that
first kind of set of narratives,and then you keep pushing.

(09:39):
You keep moving. Tell us moreabout that.

Peter Simons (09:41):
It initially was a story that was so heavily
quantitative. I was goingthrough voting roles at the most
microscopic level that I could.And then I discovered the
tranche of early opinion pollsurveys and the disaggregated

(10:02):
data and started manipulatingthe tables to figure out how I
could mine all of thatinformation for really finer
level detail. And then at somepoint, the realization that data
isn't terribly reliable in thefirst place, because it really
was just from the dawn of publicopinion polling. So some

(10:24):
corrections needed to be made.
Then again, I think there was arealization that there's just
this, I think, overly simplisticexplanation when we're looking
at voting data to understandpeople's drives, why they're
making the particular choicesthat they are. And so following

(10:44):
that, there were a number ofmentors along the way who I
don't know if they introduced meto these subfields of history,
but they made them very engagingto me. And so one of the first
was historian Nathan Godfrey atthe University of Maine. He
works on mass culture,particularly mass media and the

(11:05):
left. And radio became reallyenticing to me.
Way that is explained that,especially for rural listeners,
this sort of thistransformational, effect that
the radio can have on listeners.And so that led me away from
this heavily quantitative focusto begin to explore a richer

(11:27):
qualitative explanation for whypeople were beginning to think
differently about their ownwork, the landscapes they lived
in, about their own relationshipto the rest of the world. And
then I took my first course inhistorical geography. That was
the most transformational momentin gaining a deeper

(11:50):
understanding for theenvironmental context that
someone is in, the concept ofplace of understanding where
one's positioned in the worldand how you relate to everything
else. And this ultimately led meto environmental history.
It was a long road and I thinkthe attraction ultimately to

(12:13):
environmental history is it wassomething that was able to take
all of these what seemed likedisparate threads and really tie
them together. There was roomfor this political explanation,
but also an understanding ofplace and of physical context of
working in the landscape, of amateriality. In a way there's an

(12:37):
intellectual history that's partof the story, but there's also a
materiality that drives that.And I was admittedly a latecomer
to environmental history. I knewit existed, but I hadn't really
read deeply in it.
It really became profoundlyinfluential in how I put these
things together and how I wasexplaining the transformation in

(13:02):
viewpoint, in politicalbehavior, in a sense of
responsibility that theseMidwestern farmers that I write
about, what they underwent overthe course of World War two and
and in the postwar period.

Michael Lansing (13:17):
Yeah. It's fascinating to me to hear having
read the book, it's fascinatingfor me to hear that you actually
started with this quantitativeorientation and looking at
voting patterns because thebook, of course, is profoundly
different from that. Andfrankly, I think much more
interesting for the very reasonsthat you described as you try to
recover this sense of place, butnot just how this sense of place

(13:38):
is created, but how the sense ofplace then reshapes what
actually happens, how it shapesthe agency of these rural
Midwesterners, as they interactwith a host of other folks. And
so I'm also struck by the waysin which you just talked about
historical geography as an entrypoint, not just in to rethinking
the project but intoenvironmental history. I think

(13:59):
you're not alone there.
I had a similar experience whenI was in grad school. I, you
know, had the opportunity toencounter cultural and
historical geography and it wasit was it was a reorientation
that has been fruit ful. Even iteven if it doesn't manifest
itself, in in, say, everything ascholar does, it's sitting there
and it just shapes the way youthink. It also makes me think
about there's a little kind ofmini boom, I think. In books by

(14:22):
historians who think about placeand take place seriously as a
category of analysis.
Obviously, Kristin Hoganson'sbook about the heartland, but
I'm also thinking about MollyRosen's book on Northern
Grasslands Memoirs and SettlerMemoirs and Sense of Place or
Flannery Burke's forthcomingbook on how westerners imagine
the East. The power of placecontinues even as we bring new

(14:45):
ways of seeing and new ways ofthinking to the kind of work
that we do as scholarscollectively in this world of
history. So at the end of theday, what kind of history is
Global Heartland? Because you'vealready pointed us towards two
or three different things goingon. Tell us more about what you
think Global Heartland is as ahistory.

Peter Simons (15:03):
It's ultimately an environmental history, I think,
but I don't think it's anenvironmental history that looks
like most of what we see. Cropsare important, and I talk about
the landscape. But you know,there's not like a particular
part of the country that I'mlooking at how it was
transformed because of aparticular human process. And

(15:27):
I'm not looking necessarily athow The United States is
transforming landscapesoverseas. There's not a
particular biological agentthat's doing a lot of work in
this case.
And so it's an environmentalhistory insofar as I'm trying to

(15:47):
link an understanding ofpolitical ideology, of culture,
and how the landscape shapesthat without sort of falling
back into sort of a mechanisticunderstanding that a lot of the
sources that I referencedthroughout the book did fall
back on that. A lot of USDAofficials that make assumptions

(16:10):
that people who live in aparticular place have particular
opinions about the world thatthey, you know, they they
literally have their theirblinders on because they're just
looking at the the ground infront of them and can't
understand the rest of the worldor or you know, a particular
crop that they're growing makesthem see the world in a
particular way. So, you know,don't wanna I wanna fall back

(16:32):
into that sort of relationshipbut there is something I think,
fundamental to understanding theenvironmental context that
ultimately leads us to theseother things. And this is, I
think, ultimately whatenvironmental history at its
best is that it's not justexplaining, what we might think

(16:53):
of as the natural environment,but it's using the natural
environment to more richlyunderstand this bigger thing we
call history in the first place.
Taking all these different waysof understanding the past and
knitting them together.Sometimes it doesn't always work
elegantly, but I hope what I'vedone here does bring these

(17:13):
different strands together, evenif I'm saying that it leans
heavily on environmentalhistory. There are times where I
want to engage in sort of ahistory of cartography. There's
plenty of times where I want todo an analysis of particular
messages that are coming throughthe radio or particular images
that that farmers are reading intheir farm newspapers and how

(17:36):
that helps them reimagine theworld too but ultimately, it all
comes back to their position inthe soil, their relationship,
their livelihood, and how it'sbased in the natural
environment. Feel comfortablecalling it environmental
history, but again, it remains avexing question to me.

(17:59):
It doesn't feel like it alwaysneatly lines up with what we
might think of as a traditionalenvironmental history. I'll just
add to this as I'm thinkingagain about origin stories. I
was very firmly implanted in theworld of foreign relations when
it began. Similarly, it neverquite fit when I would go to

(18:23):
conferences or present papers.It made sense to people there,
but it always felt like itbelonged to a different
subfield.
So you bounce around all thesesubfields until you find one
that feels the most comfortable.Think again, environmental
history is that place, but ittook a while to navigate and

(18:44):
find exactly where the home ofthis particular history was.

Michael Lansing (18:50):
Well, this comes as no surprise either
because I think GlobalHeartland, as I read it, is a
book that reallymethodologically is about
intersections. Right? Like,obviously, if you look at the
notes, like, it's so clear, thisimmersion in the history of, you
know, American foreign policy.Simultaneously, immersion in,

(19:12):
kind of farm politics,historiography, this immersion
in agricultural history, thisimmersion in all these different
kind of literature. So it's it'syeah.
It's no surprise that theproject led you in these
different directions but it wasdifficult to find a place that
felt like home professionallywhere you could have
conversations with otherscholars. I actually think

(19:33):
that's one of the reasons thebook is so rich and why it's
actually a book that lots ofdifferent audiences are gonna,
find interesting because ifyou're a historian of foreign
policy, there's a very differentstory here. If you're a
historian of the Midwest,there's a different story here.
If you're an ag historian,there's a different story here.
And so the richness of workingat that intersection even though

(19:55):
it makes it difficult to writeproduces a book that's so useful
to so many different people.
I also think the way that youjust define environmental
history is, you know,environmental history in its
broadest form and, you know,there are are struggles in that
field right now and I and I lovethat you're putting your marker
down and saying, I think this isan environmental history and let

(20:16):
me tell you why because as youjust suggested, there are folks
that won't think of this as anenvironmental history when they
open it up and start reading it,but of course it is if you see
environmental history in thesebroader ways. So I love that
you're kind of laying claim tothat. So let's let's dig into
the book itself. Let's let'stalk about some of the some of

(20:39):
the ways in which you reveal,new understandings in Global
Heartland that make us thinkdifferently about a whole host
of things. The most obviousquestion that I think people
picking up the book or lookingat the website seeing, oh, great
new book, Global Heartland.
What do mid century Midwesternfarmers have to do with
geopolitics?

Peter Simons (20:59):
This is the key. And as I read, I was initially
dismayed because you read theclassics like William Appleman
Williams, and he's making anargument that farmers in a way
are shaping policy at the end ofthe nineteenth century, right?
That they're always looking formarkets. So I thought, well,
maybe there's not a story. It'salready been told.

(21:22):
And what I came to realize as Imoved from say the policy level
down to the behaviors ofindividual farmers and how they
understood the world was thatthey were not just following

(21:44):
what people in Washington wereprescribing for them. That they
were actually activeparticipants in reimagining what
their relationship to the restof the world was. And so
certainly there is a moment inwhich they are pushed along. So

(22:05):
obviously depression, twodepressions for farmers that
precede World War II, and thenthe farmers in a way are active
in the war before most otherAmericans because of the Lend
Lease Act, which takes Americangrown foodstuffs and sends it to

(22:29):
the American allies, so to theBritish, to to the Soviets, and
and to a number of of different,countries eventually as well.
And it it does that through amarket mechanism.
So it's it's not that thefarmers are necessarily setting
something aside to go to thisthing called fund leases. They
don't have any choice. Ifthey're if they're producing,
they're, you know, some smallportion of what they're

(22:50):
producing is for lend lease. Andso they get pulled into this and
it's an economic boom becausethey've been searching for
markets, of course, during theGreat Depression. They've been
curtailing their productionbecause the USDA is telling them
to, and then suddenly they'rereversing course and it seems

(23:11):
like boom times are back.
But they're wary. They know thatwars end and in their experience
that depression follows the war.Don't want to get overly excited
that the war is going to be thething that solves economic
depression that they'resuffering through. But in the

(23:35):
process of producing for war,they do adopt a patriotic
outlook in part because theyneed to explain why what they're
doing exempts them from actuallyneeding to go and serve in The
Pacific, go overseas and serveas well. So part of it is taking
on this sense of an importanceof agriculture to the war effort

(23:59):
that they are soldiers in thefields.
Attached to this is anunderstanding of even like very
specific foods and theimportance that they have. So
butter, for example, becomes themost requested food item for the

(24:20):
Soviets. And this causes anoutcry that American GIs are not
receiving butter, at leastenough butter in their training
camps in The United States thatthey're starting to get Southern
produced margarine. There's thiscrisis that you can imagine in a
place like Wisconsin orMinnesota of who deserves to get

(24:42):
this. These debates help sharpena sense of the work that's being
done on these farms is not justcontributing in the abstract to
the war, but very specifically,the butter that I produce that
has this particular label isbeing found in a mess hall in

(25:04):
England.
And so I know that I'm makingthis contribution. And so
different from that latenineteenth century description
of farmers pursuing marketsabroad, is this sense of
responsibility and that growswhen the war ends. There's a

(25:28):
sense among farmers of famine,and a worsening food situation
that the war ending is not asgood of a thing as it initially
seems because Americans arebeginning to pull back. The
federal government in The UnitedStates really wants to have
nothing to do with rebuildingAmerica initially. There's a

(25:50):
quote from the USDA that theywant the last I'm going get this
a little bit wrong, but it'sessentially that they want the
last slice of bread to go to thelast soldier who fires the last
bullet in the last battle of thewar and then nothing be left
over.
There's such a fear that there'sgoing to be, this excess that
that that will lead to thedepression. So while the federal

(26:12):
government is is is pushing backsaying we need to end our
adventure overseas, pull backhome, we wanna end price
support, farmers, of course, abit self interestedly, are
wanting to preserve thosemarkets, but there's also
something else. Obviously itdepends on each individual,
whether there's maybe areligious motive, if there's

(26:34):
sort of nationalistic motive.Think there's a bit of an
environmental chauvinism thatthis is the breadbasket of the
world and we can produce for allof these people. We were the
ones who helped win the warultimately.
We're the ones who can helpprevent a further war by

(26:55):
feeding, all of these victimswho are left over, mostly in
Europe but in other places aswell after the war. And so this
entwining of economic well-beingbut also responsibility, a sense
of global leadership all cometogether in the post war period.

(27:18):
And there are domestic effortsto push the federal government
to embrace rehabilitation, toembrace rebuilding Europe,
feeding Europe. It takes manyyears. And then, the Marshall

(27:38):
Plan, is established becausethere's a recognition that
Europe in particular needs to berebuilt.
Agriculture is is key to thisand so again, there's this sort
of insurance that's built inthat if the federal government
is buying your crops and sendingthem overseas that that that
it's not as volatile as if itwere just going out into the

(28:01):
market. And progressively,agriculture gets locked into
foreign policy that what isinitiated as part of the
Marshall Plan becomes all ofthese different programs. Today,
most of them exist through USAIDthat these these farmers in many

(28:23):
of the same places that I'mtalking about are still sending
their grain abroad through thesedevelopment programs. And so the
key here is understanding thatthese weren't programs that were
placed upon farmers, but thatthey were really key in helping

(28:45):
create them at a moment in whichthe federal government, the
USDA, the State Departmentreally showed very little
interest in prolonging any sortof presence in Europe after
World War II.

Michael Lansing (28:59):
So how does this story, as you've just
described it, scramble kind ofmore typical understandings of
Midwestern farmers as so calledisolationists, as non
interventionists because thestory that you just laid out
challenges the basic premises ofmost people's assumptions about
what's going on in the ruralMidwest in the nineteen thirties

(29:20):
and nineteen forties, in termsof how these farming people,
regardless of their ethnic orreligious or racial identity,
how they're thinking about theirrelationship with the world
around them. How did you how didyou navigate that? How did you
push back against the wholeframing of of these farmers are,

(29:41):
you know, totally committed toneutrality? These farmers are
totally committed to this notionof, you know, provincialism, the
ways in which they're cast bysome of their contemporaries,
especially outside the region,as you know. How did you
navigate that and try to tellthis very different story that

(30:02):
makes us see so differently?

Peter Simons (30:04):
That's a really great question. I feel like
there were moments where I feltlike I had slipped into writing
a history as though it were1953, and I was trying to
explain these questions thatwere prominent at the time about
isolationism and they had amoment, I think a few years ago,

(30:25):
where they were being answeredagain. So right, this goes back
to Vandenberg who just announcesthat isolationism ends for any
realist because of Pearl Harbor,but of course it's not that
simple. As Kristin Hogansonshows, these farmers had deep
commitments to overseas marketsto biological agents beyond

(30:49):
American borders long beforeWorld War II. But there is a
transformation that happens,several transformations that
happen because of the war.
One is there's a push forefficiency. If part of the goal
of the USDA during the New Dealwas to take less productive

(31:13):
farmers and move them to citiesor move them to manufacturing or
at least move them to moreproductive land, the threat of
getting drafted and fighting wasa far better instrument to do
that, that you had todemonstrate to your local board
that you could produce so manybushels or that you had so many

(31:34):
heads of cattle on your farm.And so what you do is you, first
off, have farmers that areproducing far more efficiently.
They have access to equipmentthat they didn't necessarily
have before. Increasing the sizeof their acreage and working
that acreage with far fewerpeople.

(31:56):
And so these farms get largerand they are looking for markets
that they didn't necessarilyneed to have before because
there's vastly greaterproduction. But another really
important transformation this isan old story for wheat farmers
of course because wheat had beenmoving around the globe for a

(32:19):
long time, but because oftechnologies of wartime, dairy
farmers in particular find thattheir products can now be
shipped around the world becausedehydration, creating evaporated
milk, and all these differentways of taking fluid milk and

(32:42):
turning them into products thatboth soldiers and civilians, can
consume overseas. And of course,because of the advances in
nutritional science, there's areframing milk as the perfect
food, right? So when you'rerebuilding Europe, milk has to
be one of the things that goesto the people there. And so I'd

(33:04):
be curious in your ownreflection on this too, we want
to paint with really broadstrokes that if you compare a
wheat farmer to a dairy farmer,the politics of a dairy farmer
tend to be a bit moreconservative, they tend to be a
bit wealthier, theirorganizations tend to be
friendlier to more conservativepoliticians, where it wasn't

(33:24):
necessarily true that wheatfarmers tended to have more
liberal politics.
In those more liberalorganizations, tended to find
more wheat farmers than ours. Sothere's that transformation of
who can be involved in tradethat transforms it as well.
Because of the efficiency that Imentioned a moment ago, there's

(33:46):
also a new population of peoplewho are coming to work on a lot
of these farms And some of themare coming from Mexico for the
first time. Some of them arecoming from The Caribbean and
even prisoners of war from Italyand Germany as well. And even
though these are mostly peoplewho are working in in small

(34:08):
numbers, of course in the caseof POWs, it's for a more limited
period of time, it further helpsunderscore the global networks
that it's not just that they'reraising goods that are being
sent abroad, but the inputs areglobal as well.
There's a sense that the seedsyou're

Michael Lansing (34:27):
growing

Peter Simons (34:27):
had overseas origins, but the very people
that you need to work your landto help produce these things are
coming from overseas as well. Sothere's this transformation in
the actual work of farming. Butthen I think there's a
transformation, anotherimportant one in the sort of
ideology of overseas commitment.And so you mentioned a few

(34:50):
moments ago, there's almost likethis sort of hopeful history
when we look at the teens andthe 20s that there are these
movements in the Prairie thatfeel a little out of place, that
have a vision for society, forpolitics, that in some cases is
utopian, but in some cases maybejust more focused on equity. And

(35:16):
the National Farmers Union isone of the organizations that I
look at that didn't necessarilyhave that identity a few years
before, but they become sort ofthe liberal stronghold.
They're friendly with HenryWallace when he's in the USDA.
And they very much have acooperative vision that they
might be environmentalchauvinists, but that leads them

(35:41):
to want to share their goods,share their technology, share
what they know. It it sort ofresembles a brief moment after
the atomic bombs are droppedwhere there's an actual
discussion of do we share thistechnology with the rest of the
world? Because we're actuallysafer if everybody has atomic
knowledge rather than just TheUnited States. Of course, this

(36:03):
this idea is quickly dispensedwith and it's decided that the
Americans will have themonopoly.
And I think this ultimatelyhappens with agriculture as
well, that there's this briefmoment at the end of World War
II where there's a cooperativevision, there's the heady moment
of the United Nations beingfounded, the United Nations Food
and Agriculture Organization,but ultimately all of that

(36:27):
becomes advisory committees. TheFood and Agriculture
Organization really just becomesa statistics organization, that
they're just calculating howmuch food is being calculated,
how many calories are beingconsumed around the world. It's
not really focused on trying tocreate a balance of access to
food as it was maybe originally.And so that vision of the

(36:47):
National Farmers Union is sortof cooperative, you could even
say internationalist vision. Idon't think they ever
necessarily wanted to cedeAmerican power to something that
was truly balanced among all ofits allies, but but it was
something that more resembledthat.
That quickly gives way to afully nationalist one, that The
United States would be globallyengaged, but it would be in

(37:10):
charge. And this maps onto theNational Farmers Union really
falling out of favor when Trumanbecomes president, and the
American Farm Bureau isnumerically larger to begin
with, but they re establishthemselves as the most important
political player. And so oncethe American Farm Bureau

(37:31):
embraces foreign policy as amechanism to ensure the
well-being of theirconstituents, that helps make
that part of American farmpolicy and foreign policy at the
same time. This is somethingthat I I try to trace out in the
latter half of of the book ofthat that transition moment from

(37:55):
a more cooperative optimisticmoment to one in which US
Agriculture becomes aninstrument of power, overseas.

Michael Lansing (38:04):
Yep. That is, of course, how global heartland
ends with that turn that youjust described. And it's why
this book is so importantbecause I think we have a book
like Kristen Hoganson's book onthe heartland, as you say, which
kind of sets sets up your bookand then there's been this gap.
The in the nineteen forties,there have been this gap and
then, of course, we have ShaneHamilton's work on supermarkets

(38:25):
and cold war food power. But butthe end of your book, the end of
global heartland also made methink about Katherine
McNicholstock's book, NuclearCountry, and what happens on the
Northern Plains in terms ofpolitics and political economy
to to turn these into veryconservative places.
And and what you're showing isthat anti communist turn and how

(38:49):
the Farm Bureau overtakes thefarmers union in those spaces.
It's really exciting becauseit's suddenly you're you're
making these connections acrosstime, and it and it has really
significant explanatory powerthe way you end the book. It's
yet another reason peopleshould, check this book out. I

(39:09):
have to say that chapter threeis my favorite chapter and you
alluded to it briefly there Butyour analysis of what's
happening back on the farmduring wartime, whether we're
talking about the draft anddeferments or we're talking
about the arrival or the,encouragement of workers from
elsewhere, the changes in genderor the challenges to the ways in

(39:33):
which some of these farmersimagine gender or farm families
imagine gender. It's such a it'ssuch a rich chapter, and I have
to admit that it had explanatorypower for me.
My grandfather was a wheatfarmer in North Dakota's Red
River Valley. He was the oldestson of immigrants and he had a
deferment, an agriculturaldeferment. I remember talking to

(39:54):
him and, you know, like whenyou're a teenager and you're
kind of a history nerd andyou're coming of age and it's
like, oh, wow, wow. You know,grandpa and grandma were around
during World War II. Wow.
So, you know, so you startedasking them, the elders, these
questions and it was kind of adead end to the mind of this,
you know, 14 year old boy. Like,oh, you had you you didn't you

(40:16):
didn't go to war. Well, youknow, his his younger brother,
you know, was on bomber cruisein the Pacific, but he had this
agricultural deferment. And andwhen I was reading chapter
three, I was like, oh, not onlydid I love the gender stuff, but
I loved the way that you talkabout how farmers are navigating
what this challenge means andtheir own very complicated

(40:36):
feelings about patriotism andnationalism and the need to make
money to stay on the farm. Andit just resonated so powerfully,
with the experiences in my ownfamily.
It was really great to see thatand and the ways in which
chapter three, of course, isalso the heart of the book. It's
it's it's how you put it's howyou put farmers at the center in

(40:59):
this narrative, I I think as areader at least. And so when you
put the farmers at the center ofthese stories, how does that
look differently? I mean, mosthistorians have looked at the
policymakers or they've had thatWilliam Applman Williams kind of
view from way up here. Even someof the books I just mentioned
have that kind of, you know,20,000 foot view.

(41:19):
But you bring us right down onthe ground and what it's like in
these rural communities. Howdoes that change that history in
your mind?

Peter Simons (41:26):
That that's such a good question, and and and I
really appreciate your yourcomment about the deferment. And
what comes with that is readingso many cases of guilt where
farmers are able to express thatthey have this important role to
play, that they are soldiers inthe field. But at the same time,

(41:50):
is this feeling that I'm notstanding in harm's way and that,
am I really making the samesacrifice? And so there's a very
brief story in that chapterabout a farmer, a farm son who
feels that ridicule. His mothertalks about how when he's

(42:12):
walking to church, everyone issort of glaring at him.
So he enlists. And I think it'sat Iwo Jima that he ultimately
dies after that enlistment. Thatis part of the story, is
understanding how they arerelating to possibilities of

(42:32):
what their options are. It helpsus understand what sense they
made of the world. They weren'tjust reacting to, again, to
really basic market inputs thatthey're just gonna produce
something and it goes off intosort of a black box and they get
money for that.
That there is an understandingbehind the role that they play,

(42:53):
a sense of responsibility, asense of maybe national pride or
even something moreinternational, something
cooperative that gives them astake in politics ultimately.
They a feeling that they areremaking the world at the end of

(43:14):
this. And so there's anotherpart of a subsequent chapter in
which once the United Nations isestablished, there's this
competition for where the UnitedNations is going to be. And I
didn't find any evidence offarmers per se who were
submitting, possible locationsbut there were lots of of other

(43:34):
rural Midwestern sites thatwere, proposed as ideal
locations for the UnitedNations. I think this is another
example of in understanding whatthe farmers are thinking, their
obligations, we get a sense ofhow they are ultimately helping
shape the foreign policy thatcomes to be the American

(43:59):
century.
That's really a key piece of it,that they aren't just
contributing to the Americancentury by producing for it, but
they are expressing their vocalsupport for it, that they
understand they have aresponsibility, that this is a
way to preserve global order toprevent a third world war. And

(44:20):
that in many cases, it's theirrepresentatives who are late to
arrive at that same conclusion.They do see the merit in sending
food aid abroad, but it takesthem until 1950 to to eventually
get there. My argument is thatthe farmers are ultimately the
ones driving a lot of thispolicy and that everyone else is

(44:41):
catching up on. And again, theyhave myriad reasons for arriving
at that particular conclusion.
And, this is this is one of thebiggest complications. I
mentioned the variation betweenwheat farmers and dairy farmers
a moment ago, but of course youadd all these different crops
and you add the differentgeographies of where these
particular crops are growing andof course the faith backgrounds

(45:05):
that they might be coming fromor ethnic groups. Obviously
there's a lot of complication inhow people are understanding
their relationship to relativeswho are back in Germany or the
role that, I don't know, growingapples has compared to growing
wheat or something like that.And so part of that richness
helps us understand thedifferent motivations that all

(45:26):
of these different people thatare getting ultimately grouped
together as Midwestern Farmerswrit large, all the competing
interests that they have andultimately pushing The United
States toward embracing thisglobal responsibility, this
position of leadership, or youmight say a position of hegemony
at the end of World War II.

Michael Lansing (45:45):
Yeah. Absolutely. And again, thinking
about farmers as innovators, issomething that for twenty first
century readers is is it seemsso foreign, and it's part of the
power of Global Heartland isthat you reclaim that agency and
say that actually they're aheadof their elected
representatives. You can't justgo to the political opinion
polls. You can't just look atvoting records, as you noted.

(46:08):
You can't go to those placesthat might seem like, oh, well,
this is what's going on. Thesecomplications, they matter so
much. With that in mind andbecause the book sits at these
intersections, I mean, there'swide ranging research here. When
you look at the when you lookthrough the notes, as a reader,
you can see like you you kindahave to go all over the place,

(46:28):
just to recapture and reclaimthese complications. Did did you
have a favorite primary sourcethat emerged, while you were
doing the years of research forthis book?
Was there something that justlike popped for you or a primary
source that you read and youwere like, oh my gosh, that's
it, where you had this kind ofcrystallization? Or was it a
more gradual kind ofaccumulative experience that you

(46:50):
had when you were working,especially with the primary
sources?

Peter Simons (46:53):
There is such an at times it felt like an
overabundance of informationbecause this is coming on the
heels of the New Deal. There areall these government agencies
that are trying to recordopinion and trying to they're
commissioning ethnographicstudies of particular, rural
places. And so there were justso many things to look at that

(47:14):
seemed to document everything sorichly. But ultimately it had me
sort of falling back into thatoriginal sort of political
history that quite franklywasn't quite as interesting to
me. When I began reading lettersfrom farmers who were stationed
overseas, those proved to be, Ithink, among the richest sources

(47:39):
insofar as they offered theposition of someone who did that
work on the farm but was forcedto have a new perspective on it
because they were abroad.
Then there's obviously thepressure of being in harm's way
that probably makes them thinkabout their own lives and the

(48:01):
relationship to the people theylove back home. But they would
so often be really deeplycontemplative about their work
on the farm and whether that'ssomething that they should go
back to and whether that was aresponsible thing to do. And in
one case there was a personcalled Lester Helen who did go

(48:22):
back to a farm at the end of thewar in Wisconsin and he really
ruminates in the letters back tothe woman that would become his
wife on what it's like to be inthe world and that he doesn't
want to be sort of shackled tothe farm that he had grown up
on, that he wants a differentworld. Wouldn't it be great to

(48:44):
live in the city? But he alsohappens to be stationed in
Puerto Rico when Wendell Willkiearrives on the beginning of his
around the world trip.
And so he has this wonderfulinsight into how someone who
grew up on a farm in the Midwestis looking at the world around

(49:05):
him, he's also intersecting withthese other global players who
will help shape the postwarworld. And again, in his case,
goes back to the farm. Maybe yousay his service was this brief
moment, this brief cosmopolitanmoment, and then he returns to
the farm and becomes sort of astereotypical Wisconsin farmer.

(49:28):
It is one of those moments whereyou get a sense of who he is,
how he sees the world beyondjust who he was voting for or
what organizations he was a partof. There's just a really
beautiful richness and I think avulnerability that a lot of
those historical characters areexpressing in those And so I
think that probably is among myfavorite sources, although there

(49:52):
were so many really interestingvisual sources as well.
Instances where manufacturers ofagricultural goods would adopt,
for example, global imagery. Italways felt just a little bit
too on the nose, but it was ofcourse what I wanted to find
that there is thistransformation that we're not

(50:14):
just talking about growing cornin Illinois anymore. We're
talking about growing corn forthe entire world. There is a
responsibility come that comesout of that. So so I think both
of those, the the the sourcesthat really give that that
personal sense of individuals,but then there's some just
really beautiful, visual sourcesas well that that help tell the

(50:37):
story.

Michael Lansing (50:38):
And one of the best parts of the book is when
you go through those letters ofthese, you know, people in the
service abroad writing home,thinking and reflecting. It's
such powerful source material.And as you say, it kind of gives
you perspective. It gives you awindow into the thinking that
other sources can't provide. Butwhere and how did you find those
letters?
There's not like discretecollections out there. You don't

(51:00):
go to such and such archive andlook in that collection and
there they all are. How how didyou figure out that those were
gonna be a rich source and thengo looking for them? Because
there's they have to bescattered to the winds.

Peter Simons (51:12):
There were a lot of false starts. There there
were a lot of research trips tocommunities, and I thought this
is going to be the core of thebook, that I'm going to figure
out this particular communityand the richness of the sources
would help me give a thickdescription of what the people
here experienced during thisperiod of time. And it never

(51:34):
really happened. There was justnever a place that I found that
was able to do that. But in thecourse of doing that, you do
start to pick up on these crumbsof usually just by happenstance,
going through all the letters ofvets in a particular collection.

(51:55):
Eventually you find a farmer whoshares their experience. So it
was a lot of slow going. I don'tknow what the hit rate was, but
it was probably pretty low oflike below 10% of how much
material you'll find thatactually turns out to be useful
and how much you're just kind ofsifting through to find
something. And of course thething that was so painful is as

(52:19):
I was returning to a lot of thismaterial preparing the book for
production, so much of it hasbeen digitized now. And so many
of the things that I just spentlike months reading through, I
could just do a keyword searchnow and it would be over in
probably a day.
Now admittedly, I wouldn't get1% of the the complexity that I

(52:43):
think you get from reading allof that unnecessary stuff
because it really helps createthis constellation of the worlds
that these people are living in.I do appreciate that all that
material that that eventuallydoesn't make it in. The book can
exist without that. But itreally it really was just a lot
of false starts for a long timeand then every once in a while

(53:06):
you find something that's that'sreally fantastic and and really
helps pull all of the differentthreads of the book together.

Michael Lansing (53:14):
This is something that I feel like, as
colleagues, we don't talk aboutenough in the research process,
whether we're teaching studentsor talking about it with each
other. A, how much happenstancethere is, as you just noted. B,
how things are kind of likemurky and then they slowly
emerge and it's not until youget to the end you're like, oh,
that's what happened. And thatthe the kind of messiness of

(53:35):
qualitative processes to theextent that there are processes
where you, you know, you do allthis work in the secondary
literature, you have yourquestions, you go out, you don't
find the sources that you arelooking for, you find these
other things, how do you makesense of that, all the way to
what you just described as, youknow, how you had to do all this
work that now, of course,digital opportunities make so

(53:56):
much easier. But then youwouldn't have all that context
if you hadn't, you know,trudged, spent half a day going
through all the other letters inthat collection.
I always tell students that, youknow, when we do historical
research, what shows up in thearticle or what shows up in the
book is it's like an iceberg.You see 10% of the research in
the notes, like when you look atwhat the colleague did, 10% of

(54:16):
it. There's 90% of the researchthat's not even in the notes,
and yet that 10% couldn't bethere if that 90% wasn't beneath
the surface. So it's no surpriseto hear you say that. I I wanna
ask a different question.
A question that's about, theworld that this book is coming
into, the scholarly world thatthis book is coming into because

(54:39):
it's it's 2025. The book iscoming out in May. It's called
Global Heartland. It's about theUpper Midwest at its core and,
of course, for the last decade,there's been this very self
conscious movement amongst,historians to reclaim a category
of analysis, regionalism, but inparticular to identify, the

(55:05):
Midwest as a space, that somehave argued is, you know,
understudied and requires, newattention. Of course, there has
been a really significant changein that there's now a
professional association forpeople studying Midwestern
history.
It's often referred to,colloquially as the new

(55:25):
Midwestern history. This is theworld that your book is coming
into, and obviously it's goingto become a significant part of
those conversations. Peopleignore this book at their peril,
I would argue, because it tellsus so many things about the
Midwest because you putMidwesterners at the center. But
talk to us about how you feelabout that, talked about how you

(55:45):
position yourself as a scholarin this project, how how you
imagine the so called newMidwestern history. I'd love to
hear you reflect on that nowthat you're at the end of the
process and that the book iscoming out.

Peter Simons (55:57):
I have to admit that even if I I I don't want it
to be, as you suggested, like,the the book inevitably has to
be part of that conversation.And I'll admit, I've contributed
to, I've written chapters in theedited decisions that are coming
out. So am certainly guilty ofthat. And in a way, I guess we

(56:23):
should never say that morehistory is bad history, Like we
should always want to have moreof anything to help us more
richly understand the past. Ido, I mean, as much as I
mentioned when I began that itstepping outside the Midwest for
a period that you maybe for thefirst time understand yourself

(56:44):
as a Midwesterner, There is thisalmost of Midwestern chauvinism
that I want to avoid.
And so I guess that's why I'mtentatively saying like I
understand that this is acontribution to it and I do want
to support these historiesbecause I want support any
history that's being written.And it is the Midwestern story

(57:07):
that I'm writing and I am tryingto make an argument about these
people who seem like they aren'tpart of this world of diplomacy
and foreign relations and globalpolitics that they are a part of
it. I I struggle in part withwith the conception of of a
Midwest to begin with, to behonest. And part of that is,

(57:28):
again, all the various strainsthat are coming to play that I
sometimes feel that there arepeople that I'm writing about
who are from Nebraska and thensomeone who is from, for
example, the Upper Peninsula OfMichigan that do these people
have something in common as itrelates to a region? Guess

(57:48):
there's a propinquity thatthey're close to one another,
but I don't know that there's aparticular explanatory power
there of talking about them inthat regional context.
Obviously, if we're thinkingabout someone like Bill Cronin,
when there's these very clearconnections of flows of

(58:10):
commodities throughout theregion and then you think of a
great West in that way thatthere are these ties. But if we
don't necessarily have those,I'm uncertain about, I think
about the project more generallyand, and maybe trying to knit
together this sense ofMidwesternness is there, if

(58:31):
there is this sort of sharedculture or geography or politics
or economics. These otherregional histories like the
history of the South, right?Much of the the new Midwestern
history is being defined incontrast to these other
histories, right? And There'ssomething that makes those other

(58:52):
histories make sense.
Slavery, of course, the South issomething that although there
might be all of these verydisparate cultures, like they
were unified because of thisphenomenon that existed there.
And if we think about NewEngland, it's such a tiny, part
of the country that there can bethis cohesion that we don't find
in the expansiveness of theMidwest. And so I honestly don't

(59:16):
know what to take. I would becurious of your own insights.
Again, I'm happy to becontributing to this, but I
don't know exactly what thecontribution is.
I don't know that I'm, like,helping make the argument of
there being a cohesive Midwestthat has some sort of historical
explanatory power, but I amcertainly talking about the

(59:37):
people who who live in thatparticular region. So in that
way, am certainly contributingto it.

Michael Lansing (59:43):
Well, so, you know, I was trained a long time
ago, by a number of people whowere part of that whole coterie,
the new western historians whenthose debates in the 1990s were
late 80s and 1990s were so hot,about what is the American West
or North American West and howdo we define it? And one of the

(01:00:03):
things that they taught me wasthat anyone who gets too deep
into those debates is probablytaking their eye off the ball,
ironically. Right? Like, we needwe need to have some
understanding of our basiccategories as we analyze the
past, as we think about how tointerpret the past, but that any
kind of rigidity is deeplyproblematic. Anytime someone

(01:00:25):
wants to say, here's thedefinition of say a region, you
should you should take itseriously but you should also
look at it kind of like, maybe?
Are you sure? Like, there are somany other ways to do it. And of
course, in the history of theAmerican West, that's been, you
know, aridity or like what's aunifying factor whether it's
environmental or cultural orany, you know, relationship with

(01:00:47):
the federal government. Like,all these different ideas have
been floated. And at some point,you you need to familiarize
yourself with those as ahistorian.
You need to be you need to readall that. You need to think
about all the different ways theregion has been thought of, but
you also don't want to let it,like, tie you down. And one of
the things about GlobalHeartland that I so appreciate
is that it is. Whether you wantit to be or not, it's going be a

(01:01:07):
significant contribution, to theto the new Midwestern history,
but it it doesn't but it does sonot by trying to lay claim to
something about what the Midwestis. It it it's that's not
important given the questionsthat you are asking.
You are focused on these ruralMidwesterners, these these
farmers and, the people in thecommunities around them, and how

(01:01:30):
are they grappling with thesebig questions. So by just simply
putting these people at thecenter of the story and trying
to explain how they see theworld and what they're doing and
how they're shaping things, howthey're interacting with people,
whether it's from The SovietUnion or from the USDA, you're
actually doing us more of aservice than trying to lay claim
to something about some innateMidwesternness. And and I think

(01:01:50):
based on what you've sharedhere, I think that's in no small
part because of your, you know,interest in and training in
historical geography because ofhis historical geographers, of
course, have much morecomplicated ways of imagining
region and talking about region.And I see that kind of suffused.
As soon as you said that, I litup because I see that suffused

(01:02:10):
through the book in ways thatare, powerful and actually make
the book more useful ironicallyto anyone interested in the
history of of that region.
Just as, historians of Americanforeign policy, I think, are
gonna find the book reallyuseful.

Peter Simons (01:02:25):
No. I I I really appreciate those comments.
You're exactly right that thegoal there is is not to define
the region as as particularthing. I think that's part of my
hesitancy that there's a bit ofit feels like there's an
embedded nostalgia at play inthe new Midwestern history and
that's something I want to getaway from. How you make the

(01:02:47):
argument that it's anunderstudied region when at the
center of it is probably themost studied place on earth,
Chicago.
Have been no other city has asmany books and studies that have
been written about them asChicago. And so right, I think
the goal there is to complicateit. My fear is that sometimes
when we approach the region inthat way, it moves us away from

(01:03:11):
the complication and therichness that we need to truly
understand it. Yeah, so Iappreciate that.

Michael Lansing (01:03:17):
Yeah. And I think global heartland is part
of this emerging movement withinthat smaller subfield that is
pushing back against thenostalgia that has too often
been at the heart of the projectas it was defined in the twenty
teens. And there are otherscholars like you who have these
more complicated understandingsand envisions and that's another

(01:03:37):
reason the Global Heartland isgoing to be an important book,
and why I think a lot of peopleare going to find a lot of
usefulness in it because,there's a different way of
seeing and thinking about theregion here and it's it's one
that, frankly matters more,including these untold stories
like the agricultural defermentstory and the context around

(01:04:00):
that that you build in the book.That's just one example of many.
So I actually have a a anotherquestion for you that is about
how the book lands in thismoment, and we focused on the
question of how it lands interms of scholarly currents in
this moment.
But what about 2025 in TheUnited States Of America? What

(01:04:21):
does this history tell us aboutour own time?

Peter Simons (01:04:24):
This particular moment, 2025, it it in a way,
feels like a coda potentially ofof this story. Right? That it's
it's this moment where you haveall of these forces coming
together to to make The UnitedStates a truly global force and
a global force that all of itscitizens are members of. And
USAID, of course, is theorganization that was the first

(01:04:48):
to come on the chopping blockrecently. And I will admit in
the way that I write about it,is a critical lens to it that in
a way USAID is created as adumping service for American
agricultural goods.
But at the same time, there's nodenying the fact that it was

(01:05:08):
moving calories, was movingnutrition to people around the
world who needed it. And so, asa historian, only time will
truly tell, but is this themoment where we are truly
identifying the end of theAmerican century? That is this
moment of hegemony by choicerather than maybe being imposed
by another rising power. So itis not the moment that I

(01:05:31):
imagined the book to be comingout in, but it certainly helps
put the action that's happeningin fine relief and it helps
question the environment inwhich these changes emerge from.
It helps give that sense of acomplicated isolation.
Right? That that it's not thatThe US isn't interested in
exerting its power around theworld, but it doesn't have that

(01:05:53):
that mid century vision anymorethat it seemed to have. Even
even though it would it wouldobviously take on a different
complexity with eachadministration that that would
come through it. It alwaysgenerally had that same tenor.
And again, I'll leave it as aquestion whether whether we are
seeing the end of that forsomething different.
Is it is it an intermission andthen and then we return to that

(01:06:13):
or is there something differentthat comes after that too? So it
does, I think, help really putinto relief the story that I'm
trying to tell. And again, itserves as as a bit of a coda to
that history, I think.

Michael Lansing (01:06:26):
I couldn't put it better myself. Peter, thank
you so much for this book.Global Heartland, it's a it's a
great book. People need to checkthis book out. They're gonna
find all kinds of things thatchange your mind about what you
think you know about thesubject.
So it's just so appreciated.Congratulations on the
publication of Global Heartland.

Peter Simons (01:06:44):
Thank you so much, Michael, and and thank you for
your really wonderful andincisive questions. I really
appreciate the careful eye thatyou took to the book, and I I
appreciate it so much.

Narrator (01:06:54):
This has been a University of Minnesota Press
production. The book, GlobalCultivating the American Century
on the Midwestern Farm by PeterSimons is available from
University of Minnesota Press.Thank you for listening.