The Frugal Traveler on “The Center Cut”: A New Yorker Learns Something about Farming and the Midwest

(Before It's News)

I have enjoyed immensely following Seth Kugel, the NYT‘s “Frugal Traveler,” the past six weeks as he has made his way through what his summarizing installation calls (in the print edition) America’s “Center Cut,” from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to western Minnesota.  (I note, by the way, that his trip roughly overlaps with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, but with the additions of Kugel’s start in Louisiana and his brief foray into Kansas).  In his grand wrap up in today’s paper, titled (online) ”What I Learned Driving Through the Heartland,” Kugel’s lede has a decidedly agricultural flavor that I cannot resist highlighting here for Ag Law readers:

“The udder on this cow just keeps getting better and better as the day goes on,” remarked Barry Visser, Kandiyohi County Fair dairy cattle judge, over the PA system. A boy led his prizewinning Holstein away as a friendly crowd of western Minnesotans, and one out-of-place New Yorker, looked on from the modest stands. The dairy cow competition was nearing its end; the rabbits, hens and pigs had already had their days of judgment — no udders required — and were unwinding one building down. 

Vague notions of the region were replaced by what I gleaned from museums and historical markers as well as from residents’ stories of their great-grandparents’ struggles as settlers. The simple question I asked of every farmer I met — How many acres does it take to make a family farm profitable? — launched conversations in which I learned infinitely more than you could by reading articles about farm bills.

* * *

But it was really the county fairs I attended — three in total — that won the Frugal Traveler blue ribbon for favorite activity. I didn’t even know what the 4 H’s in 4-H stood for before this summer (for the record: head, heart, hands, health), let alone that the institution shapes childhoods in much of the country. Later, when I realized that several county fairs are within a two-hour drive of New York City, I felt rather ignorant.

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