The Agrarian Question: Marx, Gender and Ecology.

This paper addresses the nineteenth century American agrarian question by focusing on the transition from frontier farming to commercialized agriculture in the Midwest, 1840s-1880s. The Midwest--specifically Illinois and later Iowa--was the epicenter of the first agricultural revolution in the United States, supplying cheap nature in the form of food and labor to an expanding world-economy. I argue that (what became) the Corn Belt was in a unique position to solidify regional specialization based on household labor, ecology, and markets. Drawing on the work of agrarian Marxists and Marxist feminists, the paper provides a historical reconstruction of household and market to recenter the American agrarian question. By providing a historicallygrounded analysis of the transition from frontier production to petty commodity production in the Midwest, I specify its ecological, geographical, and household determinants and the economic contribution of regional specialization to nation building. The birth of the Corn Belt and industrial capitalism went hand-in-glove in constituting America's cheap nature regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]