Among full-time farm operations in Dodge County, two distinct farm manage-
ment styles reflect the tensions between agrarian and industrial values, modest and
affluent farm backgrounds, and older and younger generations. The agricultural
transformations that have unfolded over three generations of farmers -- techno-
logical changes as well as social status changes -- are revealed in farmers' goals
and in their notions of success, of having "made it." This chapter will explore con-
trasting ideologies of "good farming" as embodied in the cautious and ambitious
farm management styles.

Success, as we have seen in chapter 3, is also linked to lifestyle, and the different
farm groups in the county can be distinguished by houses, cars, and other aspects
of their lifestyles. Some individuals desire a level of consumption comparable to
suburban living standards, while others have more modest aspirations based on
their family's background and memories of past poverty. These dimensions of
social status are different for large and medium scale farmers and for part-time
farmers as well. In my analysis, I have tried to describe the central trends for the
whole county, while attending also to the diversity by farm scale. These issues of
management style and lifestyle are critical in the struggle for survival in the 1980s
slump, and this chapter will provide the background to understand the effect of the
crisis on the dreams of different kinds of Dodge County farmers.

Pride in farming and in the farmer's "craft" (Mooney 1988) is one of the satis-
factions that draws people to this way of life throughout the country. In the South,
however, the poverty and lack of managerial control from the sharecropper past
created a more clouded sense of farming craft. Writing of his Iowa father, Douglas
Bauer talks of the skill that is assessed by neighbors and even by the grain dealer

-120-