In the twentieth century, natural resource conservation emerged as a vital force in US politics, laying the groundwork for present-day sustainability. Merging environmental, agricultural, and political history, Joshua Nygren examines the political economy and ecology of agricultural conservation through the lens of the “conservation-industrial complex.” This evolving public-private network—which united the US Department of Agriculture, Congress, local and national organizations, and the agricultural industry—guided soil and water conservation in rural America for much of the century. Contrary to the classic tales of US environmental politics and the rise and fall of the New Deal Order, this book emphasizes continuity. Nygren demonstrates how the conservation policies, programs, and partnerships of the 1930s and 1940s persisted through the age of environmentalism, and how their defining traits anticipated those typically associated with late twentieth-century political culture.

The conservation-industrial complex promoted a development-oriented brand of conservation that aided the rise of large-scale, capital-intensive agriculture which continues today. It also reshaped the physical and political landscapes of the country, leading to impressive conservation victories and spectacular failures by privileging some environments, degrading others, and intensifying farm depopulation. In the name of environmental protection, agricultural conservation made rural America less equal.