From Hills and Hollers: Rise of the Poultry Industry in Arkansas

From Hills and Hollers: Rise of the Poultry Industry in Arkansas. By Stephen F Strausberg. Fayetteville, Ark.: Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station, 1995. x, 221 pp. Free. Stephen Strausberg's pithy examination of the history of the Arkansas poultry industry is important to Alabamians because "the growth patterns in the poultry industry in Arkansas paralleled developments in other Southern states, including . . . Alabama" (p. 78). Alabama farmers have increased the number of broilers sold by 30 percent between 1987 and 1992, and a significant industry has developed in the counties between Birmingham and Huntsville. The last scholarly examination of the Alabama poultry industry was James Govers Hand's 1970 master's thesis, and Strausberg's work provides a model for much-needed further work on the growth of poultry production in the Heart of Dixie.

Strausberg, a professor of history at the University of Arkansas, has produced a work lavishly illustrated by graphs, charts, and photographs of facilities and industry participants. His narrative moves rapidly through the early phase of the industry, when Depression-era farmers sought alternatives to cotton planting. Co-ops, feed stores, and small hatcheries dominated poultry production in northwestern Arkansas during that time. He spends two chapters on the effect of the army's demand for chicken to supplement its rations during World War II and on subsequent attempts by entrepreneurs to stimulate public demand for poultry.

Strausberg's real story is the rise of integrated farms and agri-business conglomerates, particularly the impressive and overwhelming growth of the Tyson empire. He avoids the temptation, though, of focusing too narrowly on the giant firm and thereby neglecting other innovative and vital players whose participation in the industry was important to its success. Strausberg concludes that the problems and opportunities facing the poultry industry resemble those faced in the past: rapidly changing consumer demand, natural disasters, cutthroat competition, and special political influence.

Strausberg covers almost all the bases: he examines production problems, radical price swings, manipulation of consumer demand, industrial concentration, and the effect of state and federal policy-making on local economic concerns. Strausberg, however, speeds rather too rapidly through his tale, without fleshing out his cast of characters or filling in background on Arkansas politics and industrial growth. Also, he pays too little attention to the Arkansas Extension Service's influence on the industry and to the poultry-raising programs of the University of Arkansas in their early days.

These minor flaws aside, Strausberg has produced a useful book that cries out for an Alabama counterpart. -MARTY OLLIFF, Auburn University

Copyright University of Alabama Press Apr 1998
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