What’s the Matter with the Great Plains?

June 7, 2024 American Political Science Review, Journals, Public Scholarship Program Comments Off on What’s the Matter with the Great Plains?

In the APSA Public Scholarship Program, graduate students in political science produce summaries of new research in the American Political Science Review. This piece, written by Samantha Chapa, covers the new article by Aditya Dasgupta and Elena Ramirez, “Explaining Rural Conservatism: Political Consequences of Technological Change in the Great Plains.“

In 1940, a group of sociologists visited Haskell County, Kansas, to learn about farmers and came across a community deeply affected by the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. As the sociologists interviewed community members, they found that all were emphatic in their support for government regulation to sustain small farms. One interviewee even went as far as noting that: “If it had not been for the Government program, none of us would be here now. We simply could not have made it.” Yet, when sociologists visited the county only a quarter of a century later, views toward government had changed completely. No longer did residents believe in big government. Rather, they believed that success relied upon individual effort and strongly opposed government intervention. What could have changed in those twenty-five years? Aditya Dasgupta and Elena Ramirez explore this stark political change in their recent APSR piece.

Dasgupta and Ramirez argue that the post-World War II introduction of sophisticated farming technology ultimately brought about not only profound political changes in Haskell County but in rural America as a whole. Whereas rural America typically had a history of supporting progressive causes, namely the regulation of big business and unionization, new farming technology disrupted these political preferences. Specifically, two technological advancements brought about this change. The first was the use of petroleum-powered engines to extract groundwater, which drastically reduced irrigation costs, and the second was the invention of center-pivot irrigation, which allowed farmers to distribute water from a central well through rotating arms along a half-mile radius.

The cost of irrigation, along with improper farming techniques, made much of the Great Plains almost untenable as profitable farmland prior to World War II. Farms also tended to be small and run by families. However, the introduction of irrigation technology made access to groundwater cheaper, which brought about vast changes on the plains. Farmers on the plains could now access water from one of the largest aquifers in the world—the Ogallala Aquifer. With the two new devices, farms across the expanse of the aquifer thrived.

Three interrelated processes explain how the introduction of technology fundamentally changed American politics. First, the introduction of the petroleum pump and center-pivot irrigation encouraged the consolidation of smaller, less productive farms into larger corporate farms over time. The consolidation resulted in an elite, conservative class of land and business owners, which then trickled down to laborers, workers, and families in the region. Second, the technology could have caused the aggregation of downstream industries, which employed countless residents who then became dependent on the agriculture industry and its growth. Third, the accumulation of wealth among corporate farmers gave them significant power in the region, as they often contributed to conservative campaigns and candidates, making the area more conservative over time.

“If technological advances as seemingly small as the petroleum pump and center-pivot irrigation systems can dramatically change American politics, perhaps modern-day advancements will too.”The authors use a combination of spatial data on the aquifer, novel satellite imagery on center-pivot irrigation systems, and voting data across the Great Plains—Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado, Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico—to study the relationship between technology and partisanship. They compare voting trends in areas in the Great Plains outside the boundaries of the Ogallala Aquifer to voting trends in areas inside the aquifer’s boundaries before and after the introduction of the two irrigation machines. The authors find that counties exposed to the new irrigation system became more conservative over time. They also conducted additional analysis and found that these same counties continued to have a large agricultural workforce and that downstream industries, like feedlots and meatpacking plants, grew significantly in these areas, offering support for their overall argument.

Dasgupta and Ramirez add to the body of work examining the puzzling political transition in rural America. Rather than contending that rural residents vote against their interests, they offer a story of technological change. In an era of exponential technological advancement, the authors encourage us to examine the significant role of technology in American politics. If technological advances as seemingly small as the petroleum pump and center-pivot irrigation systems can dramatically change American politics, perhaps modern-day advancements will too.