Big Ag and the Undoing of Rural America: A Conversation with Author Sonja Trom Eayrs

For generations, the Trom family has lived and farmed in Dodge County, Minnesota, a once-idyllic rural community where area farmers raised pigs, chickens, and cows and grew corn, oats, and soy. But starting in the mid-’90s, Dodge’s livestock farmers became ensnared in contracts with corporations like Tyson, Hormel, JBS, and Smithfield Foods. This was the beginning of a perilous journey, as a generation of small farmers was squeezed out of the market, including friends and family in Dodge County.

DODGE COUNTY, INC. is a compelling legal drama recounting the Trom family’s three rounds of litigation against the county board in Dodge County, Minnesota, in efforts to prevent a corporate factory farm from going up across the road from the Trom intergenerational family farm. With the factual rigor of an attorney and the passion of a farmer’s daughter, author Sonja Trom Eayrs weaves together her family’s struggles to fight corporate injustices in rural America and the larger story of corporate livestock production in the United States: the air and water pollution, the cancer clusters, the destruction of local communities and economies, and the erosion of the democratic process.

The book provides a rare insider’s account, showing how the corporate restructuring and profiteering of Big Ag corporations impacts the political, economic, and cultural fate of a single rural community. Along the way, Sonja asks the larger, difficult questions about how – and whether – small farm towns can regain the sense of community and devotion to environmental sustainability and stewardship that was once effortlessly intrinsic to daily life.