Views on the Land

“This is home. This community, this land.”

“Land is not just a commodity to be bought and sold.”

“They own the land and that's a heritage to their family.”

“You’ll never be able to replace the land.”

“We're just caretakers. [...] It's all going to last longer than we are.”

“Land is everything.”

These quotations are a sample of what we have been hearing from Phillips County residents as we visit with them at kitchen tables, ride along in their trucks, and listen at their community meetings. We are a trio of social science researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison interested in exploring how agriculture-dependent communities promote community and ecological resilience. Within our research team, each of us comes to this place with different personal histories and research interests. What we share is a desire to understand what land means to the diversity of folks in the area. We come together with a respect for this place and a desire to do right by the people who love it.

In our research, we aim to characterize what we see and hear into a narrative that accurately reflects what people are experiencing in their communities. We do our best to maintain the integrity of the voices shared with us. Your voices.

Your community has welcomed the three of us over the past few years. Folks have opened their doors to us and have taken the time to communicate to us why this place is so special. We have heard different perspectives on the meaning and value of land. Despite the variety of viewpoints, what is clear across the board is people care deeply for the land.

Here are some of the ways we’ve heard people communicate what the land means to them:

1. Many folks have shared how they value the land in terms of intergenerational family connections. We’ve heard the land described in terms of its meaning for their grandchildren, children, and parents as well as family reaching back multiple generations. Many in Phillips County grew up on ranches, spending their formative years learning to love the land, understanding their role as land stewards, and assuming the responsibility of maintaining the land for future generations. Folks have shared how the land serves as a point of pride, giving them purpose and meaning in their lives. Even among those who do not actively farm or ranch, people have shared their commitment to honoring previous generations by continuing to steward the land and raise future generations to understand that land has value far beyond what’s reflected in property values.

2. A second point we’ve heard speaks to the land’s integral role in the community’s history. Caring for the land and caring for the community are one and the same. Caring for the land and community involves respecting the collective history of the many hardworking people who have dedicated themselves to improving and protecting this place. To disregard the land is to ignore and disrespect those legacies. Folks in Phillips County honor the community’s history with the land by respecting nature’s ways: welcoming wildlife on their own terms, championing resilient grazing practices, creatively using (and reusing) resources, and above all else, not taking more than they put in. These practices aim to not undo the work of those who came before the current generation and to leave this place better than it was for those who are still to come.

3. We have also heard community members talk about their philosophies of stewardship and conservation. In Phillips County, stewardship means taking care of the soil, plants, and animals that depend on the land. Stewardship is an intergenerational and communal ethic. It involves honestly reflecting on what folks have previously done with the land, both the good and the bad, and finding ways to improve on past practices. We have also seen that stewardship involves innovation. Sometimes innovation requires working creatively with other people and organizations to make the landscape more resilient. People have shared that they are part of a larger system, one that is greater than themselves and includes their crops and cattle as well as the wildlife and native plants.

Our team continues to focus on the innovative ways rural communities are responding to a wide range of challenges. Understanding the value of land among the people who know it best is essential for us to grasp and communicate what motivates efforts to promote community resilience.

Our goal for our research in Phillips County is to better understand and share the many perspectives, visions, and interests playing out on your prairie. With a global audience watching what happens here, the decisions made in your community will matter for many more than just you and your neighbors across the fence.

If you want to talk more about this research, the future of agriculture-dependent communities, the role of conservation, or other efforts toward community resilience, we’ll be back in town this summer. Give us a call or send us a note. We’ll continue to try our best to reflect your voices in ways that are honest and fair.

by Dr. Katherine “Katie” Curtis (Malta Class of ‘94), Danielle Schmidt and John Canfield