The Company Town: What We Gave Up, and What We Can Grow Again
I’ve driven across the American West and Midwest more times than I can count—through endless rows of corn, past Walmarts on the edge of towns, past Dollar Generals where a hardware store used to be. And every time, I feel the same quiet ache. It’s the sensation of driving through a land that looks less like a country and more like a company town.
Every town wears the same brands. Every field grows the same crop. Every community, it seems, is plugged into the same supply chain—growing what they don’t eat, eating what they don’t grow. And underneath it all, the echo of something we once had: gardens, neighbors, song, and shared tools.
We didn’t just lose those things. We gave them up, little by little, in exchange for convenience, consistency, and the illusion of independence.
What We Gave Up
Once, gardens weren’t hobbies. They were the shared heartbeat of neighborhoods. Tools were borrowed, not bought. Food came from soil you knew, hands you trusted. Children grew up watching potatoes come out of the earth, not a bag. Elders were useful. Meals had memory.
What replaced all that? Shelves of packaged food. Fuel crops instead of food crops. Debt-driven equipment. Corporate contracts. And a deepening silence in once-vibrant towns.
The consequences aren’t just economic. They’re spiritual. We outsourced not just our food—but our connection, our interdependence, our meaning.
The Illusion of Progress
Industrial agriculture promised abundance, but delivered dependence. We’re told this is the cost of feeding the world, but who is really fed? In the U.S., most of what we grow isn’t food we eat—it’s fuel, feed, or export.
We grow corn to fuel cars, not nourish families. We plant soybeans for distant buyers, not local kitchens. And we do it on land that once held peach trees, berry hedges, family cows, and backyard wells.
Meanwhile, rural communities crumble under the weight of this supposed “efficiency.” Young people leave. Old barns rot. Schools close. And still, the grain moves out, and the processed food moves in.
What Can Be Done—Practically, Now
Unhooking from this system doesn’t require revolution. It requires remembrance—and small, steady refusals.
- Start with soil. One raised bed, one shared garden, one front yard tomato plant is an act of liberation.
- Trade again. Borrow tools. Share extras. Eat with neighbors. Teach children where eggs come from.
- Unplug gently. Every purchase from a local grower, every home-cooked meal, is a small vote for interdependence over extraction.
- Co-own land. If you can, form community land trusts or shared-use gardens. Even one reclaimed lot can feed dozens.
- Tell the story. Remind each other what we used to know. Speak of your grandmother’s canning. Your uncle’s sheep. The trees that used to line the field.
This isn’t about going backward. It’s about turning around and remembering the fork in the road—and choosing the living path again.
A Different Kind of Wealth
What we need now is not more productivity—but more participation.
When you grow food with someone, you can’t stay strangers. When you know how to repair a tool, you’re never poor. When you are fed by your neighbors, you understand the sacred. These are the economies that heal.
The Midwest is not empty. It is full of memory. The West is not lost. It is waiting.
And so are we.
