American farmers can call up images from two very different historical threads when describing themselves. Farmers are rugged individualists, pioneers who tackled the unfriendly frontier, rifle in one hand, guiding the plow with the other, spouse and children all pitching in to convert the hostile landscape into productive fields that now feed not only themselves but all Americans, abundantly, with plenty left over to feed others. The other image is less sweaty or romantic. Farmers are skillful combiners of intelligence, good fortune, and hard work, better educated by far than their peers in other times and other places, blessed by […]