Talking Trash: Waste and Surplus in the History of American Agriculture

This talk explores two different periods of American agricultural history. The first half of talk examines how, prior to 1945, American farms became a profitable sink for toxic industrial waste. This toxic waste became the first generation of effective pesticides and the use of these pesticides by American famers turned American farms into places where the burden of industrial waste could be transmuted into widely distributed inputs and non-point source pollution. The second half of the talk explores the decades following World War II. After the war, agricultural output exploded, due in large part to the massive influx of industrial chemicals like pesticides and chemical fertilizers. The consumption of farm products, however, did not keep pace and immense surpluses quickly accrued and I explore some of the methods that the US government, private industry, and farmers used to deal with the crushing effects of agricultural abundance, including teaching us to waste food.

Adam M. Romero is an associate professor of science, technology, and society at the University of Washington Bothell. he is the author of Economic Poisoning: Industrial Waste and the Chemicalization of American Agriculture (University of California Press 2021), winner of the 2022 Agricultural History Society Theodore Saloutos Memorial Award for the best book on U.S. agricultural history. As a scholar he is interested in understanding why American farmers use so many industrial chemicals. Adam is also an avid gardener and spends most of his free time in his garden, talking about gardening, or helping others with their gardens.