Dodge County, Incorporated: Big AG and the Undoing of Rural America

In 2014 Sonja Trom Eayrs’s parents filed the first of three lawsuits against Dodge County officials and their neighbors, one of the few avenues available to them to challenge installation of a corporate factory farm near their intergenerational family farm in Dodge County, Minnesota. For years they’d witnessed the now widely known devastation wrought by industrial hog operations--inhumane treatment of animals and people, pollution, the threat of cancer clusters, and more. They’d had enough. They also deeply understood an effect of Big Ag rarely discussed in mainstream media--the hollowing-out of their lifelong farming community and economy in service of the corporate bottom line.

In a compelling firsthand account of one family’s efforts to stand against corporate takeover, Dodge County, Incorporated tells a story of corporate malfeasance. Starting with the late 1800s, when her Norwegian great-grandfather immigrated to Dodge County, Trom Eayrs tracks the changes to farming over the years that ultimately gave rise to the disembodied corporate control of today’s food system. Trom Eayrs argues that far from being an essential or inextricable part of American life, corporatism can and should be fought and curbed, not only for the sake of land, labor, and water but for democracy itself.

Sonja Trom Eayrs is a farmer’s daughter, rural advocate, and attorney. She is involved in several rural advocacy organizations, including the Socially Responsible Agriculture Project, Farm Action, Land Stewardship Project, and Dodge County Concerned Citizens. Trom Eayrs also serves as the business manager for the Trom family farm in Dodge County, Minnesota.