Land and People in Rural Kansas: An exploration of community values, soil health, and environmental conflict

Poor soil health threatens food security and livelihoods in rural Kansas and beyond. Yet, despite an abundance of scientific, policy, and economic evidence, conflicts persist between scholars, policymakers, and rural communities. This project explores an aspect frequently overlooked—the deeper moral roots that underlie environmental decision-making. Through a series of interviews, this thesis examines the relationship Kansas farmers have with the land they live on and dedicate their lives to. Specifically, I investigate how personal and community values influence farmers’ agro-environmental choices regarding soil health. Overall, I found that soil health practices are rooted in inter-generational values of responsibility to and stewardship of family, community, and nature, which are often connected to spirituality. However, farmers must often prioritize short-term economic gain to survive under current government programs, which favor farm consolidation and contribute to rural community destruction. Improving Kansas soil health conflicts will necessitate understanding farmers’ personal and community values. Those I interviewed emphasized that top-down regulations lead to opposition. Farmers advise that successful initiatives will be collaborative, local-based, and create an even playing field for family farms. Accordingly, they favored roundtables with local stakeholders, funding for experimental plots, and restructuring subsidy-based programs to support smaller-scale farms.