The Ideology of Success in Major American Farm Magazines, 1934–1991

Abstract

During the past century, the farm press used farm magazine stories about successful farmers to offer readers models of responses to industrialization and technological change in U.S. agriculture. This analysis of “success” stories in three major American farm magazines from 1934 through 1991 shows they have consistently featured farmers with larger than average farms and portrayed them in a way that promotes conventional, commercial agrarian values of production, efficiency, and expansion. The stories also have used agrarian imagery to further advertiser interests and marginalize more traditional conceptions of farming success.