Jason Patrick Holcomb

The contemporary American rural landscape reflects a mix of ongoing economic changes in agricultural land use, population change, and built environments. The mix depends on past and recent change which represent landscapes of memory and silence to those experiencing economic and demographic renaissance. We develop a typology of five stages that reflect the contemporary rural scene and conduct field transects in Northwest Iowa and Central Maine. Features of the dynamics in rural America are evident in photographs of residences, land use changes, and commercial structure. The study calls for additional studies on rural settlement populations, economies, and society in different environmental settings.

Government H-2A visa data and employer surveys show that Great Plains custom harvesting operations now rely on the US public employment service (PES) and private labor agencies to hire transnational labor. Wheat harvest labor problems and private labor bureau abuses during the Progressive Era were a driving force in the formation and development of the local, state, and federal PES agencies that are now used to secure foreign workers. The PES addressed harvest labor problems from the late nineteenth century until the 1930s when mechanization and drought sufficiently reduced labor demand. The PES became active in the wheat harvest again during WW II and into the 1950s until mobile custom combining crews eliminated the need for the federal government’s involvement. Beginning in the 1990s, domestic labor scarcity caused custom harvesting employers to hire foreign labor through the H-2A and J-1 visa programs. The PES is part and parcel of the H-2A visa program, but unlike most agricultural employers that use H-2A labor, foreign workers in custom harvesting are from South Africa, New Zealand, Australia, and numerous European and other countries rather than Latin America. Transnational custom harvesting employees that use H-2A visas occupy a niche within the program and thereby maintain Great Plains harvesting’s unique place in the labor market. This article traces the concurrent evolution of Great Plains harvesting and the PES from the end of the nineteenth century to the 1950s and examines the role of the PES and private labor agencies in today’s global labor market.