The Rural Midwest Since World War II

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Publisher : Northern Illinois University Press
ISBN 13 : 150175131X
Total Pages : 338 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (17 download)

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Book Synopsis The Rural Midwest Since World War II by : Rodney Anderson

Download or read book The Rural Midwest Since World War II written by Rodney Anderson and published by Northern Illinois University Press. This book was released on 2014-02-01 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: J.L. Anderson seeks to change the belief that the Midwest lacks the kind of geographic coherence, historical issues, and cultural touchstones that have informed regional identity in the American South, West, and Northeast. The goal of this illuminating volume is to demonstrate uniqueness in a region that has always been amorphous and is increasingly so. Midwesterners are a dynamic people who shaped the physical and social landscapes of the great midsection of the nation, and they are presented as such in this volume that offers a general yet informed overview of the region after World War II. The contributors—most of whom are Midwesterners by birth or residence—seek to better understand a particular piece of rural America, a place too often caricatured, misunderstood, and ignored. However, the rural landscape has experienced agricultural diversity and major shifts in land use. Farmers in the region have successfully raised new commodities from dairy and cherries to mint and sugar beets. The region has also been a place where community leaders fought to improve their economic and social well-being, women redefined their roles on the farm, and minorities asserted their own version of the American Dream. The rural Midwest is a regional melting pot, and contributors to this volume do not set out to sing its praises or, by contrast, assume the position of Midwestern modesty and self-deprecation. The essays herein rewrite the narrative of rural decline and crisis, and show through solid research and impeccable scholarship that rural Midwesterners have confronted and created challenges uniquely their own.

Finding a New Midwestern History

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Publisher : U of Nebraska Press
ISBN 13 : 149620879X
Total Pages : 494 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (962 download)

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Book Synopsis Finding a New Midwestern History by : Jon K. Lauck

Download or read book Finding a New Midwestern History written by Jon K. Lauck and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2018-11 with total page 494 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In comparison to such regions as the South, the far West, and New England, the Midwest and its culture have been neglected both by scholars and by the popular press. Historians as well as literary and art critics tend not to examine the Midwest in depth in their academic work. And in the popular imagination, the Midwest has never really ascended to the level of the proud, literary South; the cultured, democratic Northeast; or the hip, innovative West Coast. Finding a New Midwestern History revives and identifies anew the Midwest as a field of study by promoting a diversity of viewpoints and lending legitimacy to a more in-depth, rigorous scholarly assessment of a large region of the United States that has largely been overlooked by scholars. The essays discuss facets of midwestern life worth examining more deeply, including history, religion, geography, art, race, culture, and politics, and are written by well-known scholars in the field such as Michael Allen, Jon Butler, and Nicole Etcheson.

The Routledge History of Rural America

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Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1135054983
Total Pages : 426 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (35 download)

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Book Synopsis The Routledge History of Rural America by : Pamela Riney-Kehrberg

Download or read book The Routledge History of Rural America written by Pamela Riney-Kehrberg and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-14 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 2014. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Thunder from the Prairie

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Publisher : University Press of Kansas
ISBN 13 : 070063469X
Total Pages : 368 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (6 download)

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Book Synopsis Thunder from the Prairie by : Jerry Harrington

Download or read book Thunder from the Prairie written by Jerry Harrington and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2023-08-15 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Thunder from the Prairie, Jerry Harrington explores the life of Harold E. Hughes: a man of working-class origins who overcame severe alcoholism to become Iowa governor (1963–1969) and US Senator (1969–1974). As a Democratic governor in traditionally Republican Iowa, Hughes, through his charismatic leadership, helped transform Iowa into a competitive two-party state while modernizing state government to make it more responsive to the contemporary needs of its citizens. Hughes was an outspoken leader against the Vietnam War and the American military as senator, and he exposed covert operations such as the illegal bombings of North Vietnam and Cambodia. Relying upon his experience with alcoholism that nearly cost him his life, Senator Hughes spearheaded the creation of the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, which was founded on the principle that alcoholism is a disease, not a personal moral failure. Hughes’s moral compass was guided by his Christian beliefs, steering him to politics left of center. In this way, Hughes was distinctive among other openly Christian politicians of his day, whose theology manifested in conservative politics. Jerry Harrington’s detailed Thunder from the Prairie is the first book-length treatment of Harold E. Hughes. The work fills major gaps in the history of Iowa and Midwestern political history, as well as the history of the “Long Sixties” (from the late 1950s to the early 1970s). Hughes was an impactful actor within the rise of postwar American liberalism, the conflict over the Vietnam War, and the civil rights movement, and led the effort to reform the Democratic Party to make it more open to women, minorities, and young people.

Green, Fair, and Prosperous

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Publisher : University of Iowa Press
ISBN 13 : 1609387201
Total Pages : 231 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (93 download)

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Book Synopsis Green, Fair, and Prosperous by : Charles Connerly

Download or read book Green, Fair, and Prosperous written by Charles Connerly and published by University of Iowa Press. This book was released on 2020-09-01 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the center of what was once the tallgrass prairie, Iowa has stood out for clearing the land and becoming one of the most productive agricultural states in the nation. But its success is challenged by multiple issues including but not limited to a decline in union representation of meatpacking workers; lack of demographic diversity; the advent of job-replacing mechanization; growing income inequality; negative contributions to and effects of climate change and environmental hazards. To become green, fair, and prosperous, Connerly argues that Iowa must reckon with its past and the fact that its farm economy continues to pollute waterways, while remaining utterly unprepared for climate change. Iowa must recognize ways in which it can bolster its residents’ standard of living and move away from its demographic tradition of whiteness. For development to be sustainable, society must balance it with environmental protection and social justice. Connerly provides a crucial roadmap for how Iowans can move forward and achieve this balance.

A Companion to American Agricultural History

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Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
ISBN 13 : 1119632242
Total Pages : 608 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (196 download)

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Book Synopsis A Companion to American Agricultural History by : R. Douglas Hurt

Download or read book A Companion to American Agricultural History written by R. Douglas Hurt and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2022-05-11 with total page 608 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides a solid foundation for understanding American agricultural history and offers new directions for research A Companion to American Agricultural History addresses the key aspects of America’s complex agricultural past from 8,000 BCE to the first decades of the twenty-first century. Bringing together more than thirty original essays by both established and emerging scholars, this innovative volume presents a succinct and accessible overview of American agricultural history while delivering a state-of-the-art assessment of modern scholarship on a diversity of subjects, themes, and issues. The essays provide readers with starting points for their exploration of American agricultural history—whether in general or in regards to a specific topic—and highlights the many ways the agricultural history of America is of integral importance to the wider American experience. Individual essays trace the origin and development of agricultural politics and policies, examine changes in science, technology, and government regulations, offer analytical suggestions for new research areas, discuss matters of ethnicity and gender in American agriculture, and more. This Companion: Introduces readers to a uniquely wide range of topics within the study of American agricultural history Provides a narrative summary and a critical examination of field-defining works Introduces specific topics within American agricultural history such as agrarian reform, agribusiness, and agricultural power and production Discusses the impacts of American agriculture on different groups including Native Americans, African Americans, and European, Asian, and Latinx immigrants Views the agricultural history of America through new interdisciplinary lenses of race, class, and the environment Explores depictions of American agriculture in film, popular music, literature, and art A Companion to American Agricultural History is an essential resource for introductory students and general readers seeking a concise overview of the subject, and for graduate students and scholars wanting to learn about a particular aspect of American agricultural history.

Beyond Forty Acres and a Mule

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Publisher : University Press of Florida
ISBN 13 : 0813043530
Total Pages : 369 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (13 download)

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Book Synopsis Beyond Forty Acres and a Mule by : Debra A. Reid

Download or read book Beyond Forty Acres and a Mule written by Debra A. Reid and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2012-06-10 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection chronicles the tumultuous history of landowning African American farmers from the end of the Civil War to today. Each essay provides a case study of people in one place at a particular time and the factors that affected their ability to acquire, secure, and protect their land. The contributors walk readers through a century and a half of African American agricultural history, from the strivings of black farm owners in the immediate post-emancipation period to the efforts of contemporary black farm owners to receive justice through the courts for decades of discrimination by the U.S Department of Agriculture. They reveal that despite enormous obstacles, by 1920 a quarter of African American farm families owned their land, and demonstrate that farm ownership was not simply a departure point for black migrants seeking a better life but a core component of the African American experience.

The Heartland

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Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 0525561625
Total Pages : 432 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (255 download)

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Book Synopsis The Heartland by : Kristin L. Hoganson

Download or read book The Heartland written by Kristin L. Hoganson and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2019-04-23 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A history of a quintessentially American place--the rural and small town heartland--that uncovers deep yet hidden currents of connection with the world. When Kristin L. Hoganson arrived in Champaign, Illinois, after teaching at Harvard, studying at Yale, and living in the D.C. metro area with various stints overseas, she expected to find her new home, well, isolated. Even provincial. After all, she had landed in the American heartland, a place where the nation's identity exists in its pristine form. Or so we have been taught to believe. Struck by the gap between reputation and reality, she determined to get to the bottom of history and myth. The deeper she dug into the making of the modern heartland, the wider her story became as she realized that she'd uncovered an unheralded crossroads of people, commerce, and ideas. But the really interesting thing, Hoganson found, was that over the course of American history, even as the region's connections with the rest of the planet became increasingly dense and intricate, the idea of the rural Midwest as a steadfast heartland became a stronger and more stubbornly immovable myth. In enshrining a symbolic heart, the American people have repressed the kinds of stories that Hoganson tells, of sweeping breadth and depth and soul. In The Heartland, Kristin L. Hoganson drills deep into the center of the country, only to find a global story in the resulting core sample. Deftly navigating the disconnect between history and myth, she tracks both the backstory of this region and the evolution of the idea of an unalloyed heart at the center of the land. A provocative and highly original work of historical scholarship, The Heartland speaks volumes about pressing preoccupations, among them identity and community, immigration and trade, and security and global power. And food. To read it is to be inoculated against using the word "heartland" unironically ever again.

Nature at War

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Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1108419763
Total Pages : 399 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (84 download)

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Book Synopsis Nature at War by : Thomas Robertson

Download or read book Nature at War written by Thomas Robertson and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-04-02 with total page 399 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "World War II was the largest and most destructive conflict in human history. It was an existential struggle that pitted irreconcilable political systems and ideologies against one another across the globe in a decade of violence unlike any other. There is little doubt today that the United States had to engage in the fighting, especially after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. The conflict was, in the words of historians Allan Millett and Williamson Murray, "a war to be won." As the world's largest industrial power, the United States put forth a supreme effort to produce the weapons, munitions, and military formations essential to achieving victory. When the war finally ended, the finale signaled by atomic mushroom clouds over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, upwards of 60 million people had perished in the inferno. Of course, the human toll represented only part of the devastation; global environments also suffered greatly. The growth and devastation of the Second World War significantly changed American landscapes as well. The war created or significantly expanded a number of industries, put land to new uses, spurred urbanization, and left a legacy of pollution that would in time create a new term: Superfund site"--

Chemical Lands

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Publisher : University of Alabama Press
ISBN 13 : 0817319735
Total Pages : 209 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (173 download)

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Book Synopsis Chemical Lands by : David D. Vail

Download or read book Chemical Lands written by David D. Vail and published by University of Alabama Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An exploration of the elaborate relationship between farmers, aerial sprayers, agriculturalists, crop pests, chemicals, and the environment. The controversies in the 1960s and 1970s that swirled around indiscriminate use of agricultural chemicals—their long-term ecological harm versus food production benefits—were sparked and clarified by biologist Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962). This seminal publication challenged long-held assumptions concerning the industrial might of American agriculture while sounding an alarm for the damaging persistence of pesticides, especially chlorinated hydrocarbons such as DDT, in the larger environment. In Chemical Lands: Pesticides, Aerial Spraying, and Health in North America’s Grasslands since 1945 David D. Vail shows, however, that a distinctly regional view of agricultural health evolved. His analysis reveals a particularly strong ethic in the North American grasslands where practitioners sought to understand and deploy insecticides and herbicides by designing local scientific experiments, engineering more precise aircraft sprayers, developing more narrowly specific chemicals, and planting targeted test crops. Their efforts to link the science of toxicology with environmental health reveal how the practitioners of pesticides evaluated potential hazards in the agricultural landscape while recognizing the production benefits of controlled spraying. Chemical Lands adds to a growing list of books on toxins in the American landscape. This study provides a unique Grasslands perspective of the Ag pilots, weed scientists, and farmers who struggled to navigate novel technologies for spray planes and in the development of new herbicides/insecticides while striving to manage and mitigate threats to human health and the environment.

Harvest of Hazards

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Publisher : University of Iowa Press
ISBN 13 : 1609384989
Total Pages : 269 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (93 download)

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Book Synopsis Harvest of Hazards by : Derek Oden

Download or read book Harvest of Hazards written by Derek Oden and published by University of Iowa Press. This book was released on 2017-05 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this study of the farm safety movement in the Corn Belt, historian Derek Oden examines why agriculture was so dangerous and why improvements were so difficult to achieve. Harvest of Hazards incorporates agriculture into the histories of occupational safety and public health.

Cutting Into the Meatpacking Line

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Publisher : Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN 13 : 0807861405
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (78 download)

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Book Synopsis Cutting Into the Meatpacking Line by : Deborah Fink

Download or read book Cutting Into the Meatpacking Line written by Deborah Fink and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2000-11-09 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The nostalgic vision of a rural Midwest populated by independent family farmers hides the reality that rural wage labor has been integral to the region's development, says Deborah Fink. Focusing on the porkpacking industry in Iowa, Fink investigates the experience of the rural working class and highlights its significance in shaping the state's economic, political, and social contours. Fink draws both on interviews and on her own firsthand experience working on the production floor of a pork-processing plant. She weaves a fascinating account of the meatpacking industry's history in Iowa--a history, she notes, that has been experienced differently by male and female, immigrant and native-born, white and black workers. Indeed, argues Fink, these differences are a key factor in the ongoing creation of the rural working class. Other writers have denounced the new meatpacking companies for their ruthless destruction of both workers and communities. Fink sustains this criticism, which she augments with a discussion of union action, but also goes beyond it. She looks within rural midwestern culture itself to examine the class, gender, and ethnic contradictions that allowed--indeed welcomed--the meatpacking industry's development.

The Geography of Hate

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Publisher : University of Illinois Press
ISBN 13 : 0252055020
Total Pages : 197 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (52 download)

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Book Synopsis The Geography of Hate by : Jennifer Sdunzik

Download or read book The Geography of Hate written by Jennifer Sdunzik and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2023-11-07 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The uncomfortable truths that shaped small communities in the midwest During the Great Migration, Black Americans sought new lives in midwestern small towns only to confront the pervasive efforts of white residents determined to maintain their area’s preferred cultural and racial identity. Jennifer Sdunzik explores this widespread phenomenon by examining how it played out in one midwestern community. Sdunzik merges state and communal histories, interviews and analyses of population data, and spatial and ethnographic materials to create a rich public history that reclaims Black contributions and history. She also explores the conscious and unconscious white actions that all but erased Black Americans--and the terror and exclusion used against them--from the history of many midwestern communities. An innovative challenge to myth and perceived wisdom, The Geography of Hate reveals the socioeconomic, political, and cultural forces that prevailed in midwestern towns and helps explain the systemic racism and endemic nativism that remain entrenched in American life.

Mennonite Farmers

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Publisher : JHU Press
ISBN 13 : 1421442043
Total Pages : 349 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (214 download)

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Book Synopsis Mennonite Farmers by : Royden Loewen

Download or read book Mennonite Farmers written by Royden Loewen and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2021-11-02 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comparative global history of Mennonites from the ground up. Winner of the Wallace K. Ferguson Prize by the Canadian Historical Association, Nominee of the Margaret McWilliams Award by the Manitoba Historical Society Mennonite farmers can be found in dozens of countries spanning five continents. In this comparative world-scale environmental history, Royden Loewen draws on a multi-year study of seven geographically distinctive Anabaptist communities around the world, focusing on Mennonite farmers in Bolivia, Canada, Indonesia, the Netherlands, Russia, the United States, and Zimbabwe. These farmers, who include Amish, Brethren in Christ, and Siberian Baptists, till the land in starkly distinctive climates. They absorb very disparate societal lessons while being shaped by particular faith outlooks, historical memory, and the natural environment. The book reveals the ways in which modern-day Mennonite farmers have adjusted to diverse temperatures, precipitation, soil types, and relative degrees of climate change. These farmers have faced broad global forces of modernization during the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, from commodity markets and intrusive governments to technologies marked increasingly by the mechanical, chemical, and genetic. Based on more than 150 interviews and close textual analysis of memoirs, newspapers, and sermons, the narrative follows, among others, Zandile Nyandeni of Matopo as she hoes the spring-fed soils of Matabeleland's semi-arid savannah; Vladimir Friesen of Apollonovka, Siberia, who no longer heeds the dictates of industrial time of the Soviet-era state farm; and Abram Enns of Riva Palacio, Bolivia, who tells how he, a horse-and-buggy traditionalist, hired bulldozers to clear-cut a farm in the eastern lowland forests to grow soybeans, initially leading to dust bowl conditions. As Mennonites, Loewen writes, these farmers were raised with knowledge of the historic Anabaptist teachings on community, simplicity, and peace that stood alongside ideas on place and sustainability. Nonetheless, conditioned by gender, class, ethnicity, race, and local values, they put their agricultural ideas into practice in remarkably diverse ways. Mennonite Farmers is a pioneering work that brings faith into conversation with the land in distinctive ways.

The Iron Road in the Prairie State

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Publisher : Indiana University Press
ISBN 13 : 0253019125
Total Pages : 238 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (53 download)

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Book Synopsis The Iron Road in the Prairie State by : Simon Cordery

Download or read book The Iron Road in the Prairie State written by Simon Cordery and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2016-01-20 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1836, Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas agreed on one thing: Illinois needed railroads. Over the next fifty years, the state became the nation's railroad hub, with Chicago at its center. Speculators, greed, growth, and regulation followed as the railroad industry consumed unprecedented amounts of capital and labor. A nationwide market resulted, and the Windy City became the site of opportunities and challenges that remain to this day. In this first-of-its-kind history, full of entertaining anecdotes and colorful characters, Simon Cordery describes the explosive growth of Illinois railroads and its impact on America. Cordery shows how railroading in Illinois influenced railroad financing, the creation of a national economy, and government regulation of business. Cordery's masterful chronicle of rail development in Illinois from 1837 to 2010 reveals how the state's expanding railroads became the foundation of the nation's rail network.

American Farms, American Food

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Publisher : Lexington Books
ISBN 13 : 1498508219
Total Pages : 158 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (985 download)

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Book Synopsis American Farms, American Food by : John C. Hudson

Download or read book American Farms, American Food written by John C. Hudson and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2016-08-16 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a concise interpretation of how food and agriculture are connected. The chapters treat specific crops or livestock types from the point of view of both production and consumption, highlighting the changes that have taken place in both farming strategies and food preferences over the years.

Rural Economic Development in the 1980's

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 436 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (31 download)

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Book Synopsis Rural Economic Development in the 1980's by : United States. Department of Agriculture. Economic Research Service. Agriculture and Rural Economy Division

Download or read book Rural Economic Development in the 1980's written by United States. Department of Agriculture. Economic Research Service. Agriculture and Rural Economy Division and published by . This book was released on 1987 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: