Agriculture, especially in country music, its the symbol of self-sufficiency and the American spirit. This is really central to a lot of American cultural representations. It's an open ended question of what will happen next. I could see a reckoning where people try to work through this, or I can see the opposite where people stick to the ideology and imagery of self-reliance and self-sufficiency, even though the concept is pretty much gone. Which it almost is, in the current moment.
Writer Nick Murray examines the intersection of agriculture, capital and country music - as automation and corporatized tech looms over the future of the farm, traditional values around individualism and self-sufficiency are being exposed, or somehow both ignored and commodified at the Bayer presents Luke Bryan Farm Tour.
Nick wrote the essay Agriculture Wars for Viewpoint Magazine.