Harvesting the High Plains - John Kriss and the Business of Wheat Farming, 1920-1950 (Hardcover, New)

"Harvesting the High Plains" is the rags-to-riches story of how Kriss applied hard work and common sense to make large-scale farming work under the most adverse conditions. Drawing on correspondence between Kriss and Garvey, it tells how the two men had to make innumerable decisions about the purchase of expensive machinery and of ever larger tracts of land, and how Kriss kept detailed records of crops and rainfall to manage the land carefully, farming thousands of acres in an environmentally sensitive way and retaining a viable operation even during the Dust Bowl years.

In chronicling the story of Kriss's success, historian Craig Miner provides a bold counterpoint to the argument that large, technology-based farming is inherently bad or that only small farmers can be conscientious stewards of the land. He sets his narrative in the context of local and agricultural history-as well as the Kriss family's own story-in order to document the transition to mechanized, specialized farming on the plains. He addresses philosophical and historical questions about the relation between agriculture and nature in a semiarid region, showing that G-K Farms managed to strike a remarkable balance between profit and ecology. He also suggests that G-K may even have done its region more economic good than small farms simply by staying in business during bad times.

The Kriss family still works the land, and although their operation is huge, it still depends on traditional family farming values and approaches. Harvesting the High Plains provides keen insights into their special approach to large-scale farming and gives a human face to the faceless statistics of other agricultural studies.

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