Carlson: "The Nenana Agricultural Land Sale in Alaska’s Tanana Valley"
What will climate change and current geopolitics mean for Alaskan farming? Andrew Carlson ruminates on family history and the future of agriculture in the far north in this essay, highlighting that farming on the margins often relies on forces of industrial capitalism beyond local control.
Andrew J. Carlson ll has published on the subject of agricultural history in Alaska's Tanana Valley in the following history journals: Alaska History, Journal of the West, and Montana The Magazine of Western History.
We welcome essays that apply the stories and methodologies of our allied fields to the issues that currently affect our daily lives. If you are interested in contributing, please contact Adrienne Petty at ampetty@wm.edu or Drew Swanson at dswanson@georgiasouthern.edu. This post should be cited as: Andrew Carlson, “The Nenana Agricultural Land Sale in Alaska’s Tanana Valley,” The Short Rows, 14 April 2023. https://www.aghistorysociety.org/carlson-the-nenana-agricultural-land-sale-in-alaskas-tanana-valley
Courtesy of Alaska DNR/Division Of Agriculture, https://fm.kuac.org/2022-06-09/state-begins-selling-land-in-agriculture-project-near-nenana
I became intrigued by the agricultural history of Alaska’s Tanana Valley due to my great grandfather, Ralph Gadbury, who moved to the territory of Alaska in 1951. Gadbury started a pioneer dairy farm in the valley (near what would become the town of North Pole in 1953). During his time as a dairy farmer on America’s last frontier he was featured in the USDA’s centennial publication, After A Hundred Years.[i] When I first learned about my great grandfather’s story, I wondered why he had failed at farming in Alaska and why the state had so few farms. Recently, Alaskans have been asking why aren’t there more farmers in the aftermath of COVID 19, which raised concerns regarding the fragility of the state’s food supply system. My family experienced this fragility first-hand during our 179-mile drive to the nearest Costco, located in Anchorage: when we got there, we could not find essential items, including flour.
Ralph Gadbury taken from the Dept. of Ag. book After A Hundred Years, Photo ID# (16-CY-60-BN-17146). Used with permission.
Alaska’s renewed interest in agriculture can be observed in current governor Mike Dunleavy’s proclamation of May 3, 2022 to be “Agriculture Day.” “In the past few years,” Dunleavy’s proclamation read, “Alaskans have been made increasingly aware of the need to enhance the security of our in-state food supply due to many floods, wildland fires, earthquakes and the COVID-19 Pandemic.”[ii] In response to food shortages during the pandemic, Dunleavy also announced that the state is currently selling land in Nenana, located in the Tanana Valley, to encourage farming and provide better food security. Currently Alaska is very food insecure, with 95 percent of its food imported from elsewhere.[iii] Finding a solution to resolve this problem is imperative.[iv] In advertising the available land, Dunleavy touted the state’s natural resources:
“Alaska is a land of abundant natural resources, a land with great opportunities. Alaska has set the bar of sustainable resource management with the responsible development of our unmatched fish and timber industries. Alaska is positioned as a ‘crossroad’ in the global transportation system, with international air and seaports. This unique position increases our value to the United States and the rest of the world as a major hub for world commerce.”[v]
Dunleavy’s call to combat food insecurity in Alaska holds broader implications for many other states across the country. There are currently twenty-six other states that are just as food insecure as Alaska. There are also another nine states that are even more food insecure than Alaska, according to the USDA.[vi]
History is featured prominently in Dunleavy’s proclamation, which explained that “agriculture plays an integral role in the success of every civilization, and was instrumental to the settlement of Alaska. From farmers feeding the miners of the 1800’s gold rush to the settlers of the Tanana Valley, Alaskan frontiersman have seen potential for agriculture and development in Alaskan communities.”[vii]
Used with permission from USDA Economic Research Service. https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistics-charting-the-essentials/food-security-and-nutrition-assistance/
The promotion of Alaskan agriculture has been a recurring theme. Unfortunately, Alaskan agriculture has not experienced the same degree of success as comparable circumpolar regions, such as Norway.[viii] Norway is 50 percent self-sufficient in its food and agricultural production compared to Alaska, which is just 5 percent self-sufficient. A few efforts that have unsuccessfully attempted to bolster Alaskan food production in the past include: the reindeer meat industry, the promotion of agricultural lands along the Railbelt of Alaska by the federally owned Alaskan Railroad, the New Deal project of the Matanuska Colony, the Delta Barley Project, and the Point Mackenzie Dairy Project. A running theme is that larger industrialized farm operations do not do well in Alaska. What remains to be seen is the future success or failure of the Nenana Agricultural Land Sale, whose land lottery bids were unsealed on October 19, 2022.[ix]
Understanding the Tanana Valley’s agricultural past is pertinent for farmers who acquired tracts in the Nenana sale, especially since Dunleavy noted agriculture had long been vital “to the settlers of the Tanana Valley.” The valley has experienced its fair share of cyclicality during the past century. World War II, the Cold War, the ebb and flow of an oil industry, and improvements in food transportation all played a hand in shaping the valley’s agriculture. The potato industry did well in the valley from the outbreak of World War II until it collapsed in 1959, due to the introduction of dried potatoes. The dairy industry did well in the valley from 1959 until refrigerated air transportation brought milk into the valley cheaper than locals could produce it by 1967. Alaska became oil rich in 1968. The discovery of oil on Alaska’s North Slope prompted then Governor Jay Hammond to attempt funding renewable resource industries, such as agriculture, during his two terms (1974-1982). Hammond believed that investing in agriculture would help Alaska’s economy thrive long after the oil boom had ended. Ironically, the state invested in large, industrialized agriculture, which is largely dependent on oil to operate.
The first phase of the Hammond administration’s agricultural plan was to start the Delta Barley Project in the Tanana Valley, which was supposed to provide cheaper grain for kickstarting a dairy industry at Point Mackenzie, located in the Matanuska Valley to the south. Nenana was also imagined to have agricultural potential, but was largely ignored due to the difficulty of access at the time.[x] The lack of bridge access had impeded earlier development during Hammond’s promotion of agriculture.[xi] Unfortunately for the state’s farmers, when Hammond’s term as governor ended in 1982 his agricultural plans were not carried to fruition.
Since Hammond’s plans were not seen through, there was an incomplete agricultural infrastructure, which Hammond envisioned as “links in a chain.” One link was a 24-million-dollar grain terminal originally planned for construction in Seward, but Valdez ultimately won the right to build the terminal even though it is on the road system but not the rail line. The grain terminal still stands, but is unused to the present day. The “links in a chain” were also dependent on oil revenue funding, and when oil prices plummeted in Alaska in 1986, so did funding for Hammond’s agricultural projects. The details were unique to Alaska, but the projects’ fossil fuel dependency mirrored the unsustainable industrial agricultural practices from the lower 48 states.
A new bridge over the Nenana River, finished in 2020, has opened up previously unreachable lands and piqued renewed interest in regional agriculture. Twenty-four of the twenty-seven tracts in the land sale found buyers, bringing the state of Alaska $1,019,856, and additional land sales are being planned in the near future.[xii]
Used with permission of Alaska DNR/Division Of Agriculture, https://dnr.alaska.gov/ag/nentot/images/gallery/41.jpg
Bert Stimple from the dust jacket cover of his autobiography, Fun on the Farm in Alaska.
The question is, will these new landowners succeed at farming in the Tanana Valley? These new farmers’ undertaking might be seen as heroic, since Alaska needs to improve its food security, but their journey will not be an easy one since historically there have been few “successful” valley farmers, with bankruptcy common (as was the case throughout global farming). One exception to this bankruptcy norm in the valley was Bert Stimple, who with some grit, ingenuity, and the right timing was able to carve himself an excellent living from the land with a farm valued conservatively at $100,000 when he fortuitously retired in 1959 (closer to a million dollars in today’s money). Stimple’s success was due to his opportune timing, unlimited patience, and intensively tending just six acres. Stimple was also able to acquire lucrative military contracts, due to increased government spending on bases in Fairbanks, due first to WWII and then fear of the Russians during the Cold War.[xiii]
Later, WWII veterans who came to farm in the Tanana Valley, such as Ralph Gadbury and Barney Hollembaek, and who attempted to farm on a larger scale would not be as fortunate as Stimple had been in their agricultural endeavors. Gadbury attempted to start a creamery in Fairbanks in 1964 known as the Golden Heart Creamery (Fairbanks is known as the Golden Heart City due to its central location in the state), but local Tanana Valley residents chose to buy cheaper imported milk from outside dairies rather than from the Golden Heart Creamery. The Alaska Sportsman Magazine referred to Gadbury as “successful,” but temporary success rarely ensures sustainability in farming as improvements in shipping and transportation in the dairy industry throughout America were out of Gadbury’s control, and the Golden Heart Creamery closed when Gadbury declared bankruptcy in 1967.[xiv]
Hollembaek had his share of frustrations as well. He was involved with Hammond’s agricultural task force and described as its most “successful farmer.” Hollembaek, although a notable member of the Delta Barley Project, was helpless to get his grain to market when the links in the chain that Hammond envisioned were never completed. Hollembaek noted the reality on his 900-acre farm: “You can raise the crop here, but what are you going to do after you raise it?” Hollembaek and Gadbury both proved one can farm in the Tanana Valley, but both men ended up declaring bankruptcy, in Hollembaek’s case in 1988.
Barney Hollembaek [left] standing next to Jay Hammond [left center], Used with permission of Alaska’s Digital Archives, https://vilda.alaska.edu/digital/collection/cdmg21/id/23463/rec/3
One way the Nenana farmers could become successful is by having smaller farming operations focused on feeding local markets. There is an excellent example of this in Fairbanks: Susan Wilsrud and her husband, who are farming just 3 acres at Calypso Farm. Science writer Yasmin Tayag, writing for the The New Yorker, noted after observing Calypso Farm, “Maybe the future of America’s largest state… will depend on its smallest farms.”[xv]
Tensions with Russia have heightened once again since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.[xvi] Alaska is currently one barge away from being without food for two weeks. If Russian aggression were to occur, Alaska’s food supply would be vulnerable.[xvii] These tensions likewise could help farmers in Nenana, if temporarily, much as the Cold War helped Bert Stimple. Another factor that could help Nenana farmers is rising temperatures. Ironically, the Tanana Valley’s agricultural prospects might improve with global warming. The valley’s mean temperature is projected to increase by 8 degrees by 2071.[xviii] With warmer temperatures spanning longer periods of time and more frost-free days, farmers in Nenana should benefit from longer growing seasons than their predecessors.
Farming in the valley will not be an easy endeavor, and it will take, as historian Sally Robinson noted, “unlimited patience and experimentation” to succeed.[xix] Many of these new farmers will likely fail, however there may be a few farmers who are able to pull off the impossible, such as what Stimple proved can be done. Looking at the historical record, Stimple and other smaller farming operations such as Calypso Farm have done better than larger farming operations, such as those of Gadbury and Hollembaek. In its tensions between industrialization, government programs, marginal environments, and fossil fuel dependency, the Tanana Valley provides an excellent microcosm of larger issues looming in both American and global agriculture regarding the dichotomy between large, unsustainable, corporate farms versus smaller, sustainable, local farms.
Citations
[i] U.S. Department of Agriculture, After A Hundred Years: Annual Yearbook of Agriculture (1962), 60.
[ii] https://gov.alaska.gov/agriculture-day-4/
[iii] https://www.alaskafoodsystems.com/
[iv] Kalb T. Stevenson, Heidi B. Rader, Lilian Alessa, Andrew D. Kliskey, Alberto Pantoja, Mark Clark, and Jeffery Smeenk, “Sustainable Agriculture for Alaska and the Circumpolar North: Part III. Meeting the Challenges of High-Latitude Farming,” Arctic 67, no. 3 (2014): 320-339.
[v] https://dnr.alaska.gov/ag/nentot/
[vi] https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistics-charting-the-essentials/food-security-and-nutrition-assistance/
[vii] https://gov.alaska.gov/agriculture-day-4/
[viii] https://www.trade.gov/country-commercial-guides/norway-agricultural-sectors-food-agriculture-fishery-and-forestry
[ix] https://www.akbizmag.com/industry/agriculture/more-than-1m-bid-on-farm-tracts-near-nenana/
[x] For more on the history of agriculture in Alaska’s Tanana Valley see Andrew Carlson, “Boom and Bust in the Tanana Valley Potato Industry ‘Super Spud’ Bert Stimple, 1936-1959,” Montana The Magazine of Western History 73, no. 1 (Spring 2023): 21-38; Andrew Carlson, “Boom and Bust in the Tanana Valley Dairy Industry: Ralph Gadbury and the Golden Heart Creamery, 1951-1967,” Alaska History 31, no. 1 (Spring 2016): 13-26; and Andrew Carlson “Boom and Bust in the Tanana Valley Grain Industry: Barney Hollembaek and the Delta Barley Project, 1968-1988,” Journal of the West 61, no. 3 (Summer 2022): 70-81.
[xi] https://www.hcn.org/articles/north-agriculture-alaska-land-sale-kicks-off-the-states-ambitious-new-agriculture-project
[xii] https://www.akbizmag.com/industry/agriculture/more-than-1m-bid-on-farm-tracts-near-nenana/
[xiii] Report on Exploring Investigations of Agricultural Problems in Alaska (Washington DC: Agricultural Research Administration United States Department of Agriculture, 1949), 1-185. The potato section is found between pages 139-144; this section covers potato diseases. Underneath a picture of Bert Stimple on page 143 is a description stating, “Mr. Bert Stimple in his six-acre field of White Swiss potatoes in mid-July. This field produced approximately 30,000 pounds per acre. The farm is on Farmers Loop Road near Fairbanks. Note the densely wooded, gently rolling character of the landscape in the background.”
[xiv] Kendra Smith-Howard, Pure and Modern Milk: An Environmental History since 1900 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). See chapter 4, “From the Ice Cream Aisle to the Bulk Tank: The Post War Landscape of Mass Consumption,” 98-121.
[xv] Yasmin Tayag, “The Surreal Abundance of Alaska's Permafrost Farms,” New Yorker, August 30, 2022. https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-a-warming-planet/the-surreal-abundance-of-alaskas-permafrost-farms.
[xvi] https://www.adn.com/politics/2022/03/16/a-russian-lawmaker-wants-alaska-back-good-luck-with-that/ see also https://www.businessinsider.com/kremlin-official-suggests-US-remember-Alaska-belonged-to-Russia-2022-7 see also https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/27/us/army-alaska-arctic-russia.html
[xvii] https://www.newsminer.com/opinion/community_perspectives/pioneering-a-sustainable-independent-food-supply-for-alaska/article_61c009c8-4c49-11ed-9af8-4f245a35720a.html
[xviii] Rick Lader, John E. Walsh, Uma S. Bhatt, and Peter A. Bieniek, “Agro-Climate Projections for a Warming Alaska,” Earth Interactions 22, no. 18 (2018): 1–24. For Tanana Valley see pages 8 and 16.
[xix] Sally Robinson, “Humble Dreams: An Historical Perspective on Yukon Agriculture Since 1846,” The Northern Review 32 (Spring 2010): 135-167.