Draining Iowa: An Environment of Slow Violence

• In Event: Interrogating Naturalization and Romanticization in Rural Extractive Environments: The American Midwest and Scotland

Abstract

Farm fields are built environments, though they might not look that way to the untrained eye. Once part of the native tallgrass prairie ecosystem, the farm fields of north central Iowa represent the quintessentially American heartland. Altered by human forces and simple on the surface, these fields are in fact complex, designed systems of infrastructure valued as some of the highest quality agricultural land in the world. Over time, as the practice of farming evolved into industrialized, capital-intensive ‘Big Ag,’ the farm fields consolidated, becoming ever-more sophisticated systems of infrastructure. The original goal of this infrastructure was to remove water as efficiently as possible from the fields to allow for the cultivation of the wetland prairies of the Des Moines lobe. Culturally, these artificial environments with an estimated 800,000 miles of subterranean drainage tile have been naturalized. Agricultural fields are perceived through a lens of regional romanticism as bucolic, wholesome, and natural. Yet today, Iowans live in the most ecologically-altered state in the nation; a physical, financial, political, legal, and cultural environment of slow violence. The limits of humans’ abilities to sustainably shape the environment are now being felt. The experience of those limits in rural environments must be understood as the radically transformed landscapes of the rural built environment have huge implications for the future of this planet. Farm fields are leading us toward ecological collapse. Using transdisciplinary data and historical Geographic Information Systems (GIS), this paper constructs an historical, spatial narrative by taking a close look at the tile drainage system of north central Iowa. The human-constructed drainage system not only changed the native ecosystem forever but also solidified Iowa as a landscape of capitalism.

Author

• Kristen Greteman, Iowa State University