in Fishing, Farming & Forestry Beyond a Good Catch: Innovation and advocacy

A Century of Maine Resourcefulness

shifts in national markets and consumer tastes. Mechanization that addressed labor shortages also had the potential to dramatically deplete natural resources.

While the state’s economic makeup shifted dramatically after 1910 to include a more diverse and service-based economy, Maine’s natural resource-based sectors persevered, albeit in new forms that we see today. There’s no other option in a state with 17 million acres of forestland and 3,478 miles of tidal shoreline.

“These are industries that require people to be out of doors in inclement weather, to be resourceful and to be adaptable,” says Judd, author, former longtime editor of the Maine Historical Society’s quarterly journal, Maine History, and co-editor of the Historical Atlas of Maine and Maine: The Pine Tree State from Prehistory to the Present. “Getting along in farming, forestry and fishing has made for people who are enormously resourceful. I would say, that’s been the

great resource for the state of Maine — the mindset of the people who have grown up with nature in all of its aspects.”

As small family farming, woodswork and groundfishing were in decline in the early 1900s, tourism was on the rise and environmental awareness grew stronger. The state’s natural resource dependency took on new meaning. The intersection of the four natural resource-based industries and the Mainers keeping them strong have contributed not just to Maine’s economic well-being, but its identity.

IN SOME WAYS , the 1920s were a low point for agriculture in New England and Maine, Judd says. From its peak in

in Fishing, Farming & Forestry

Written by Margaret Nagle

THE PAST CENTURY of state history has been an era of “continuity and change in the way Maine people used natural resources,” and no more so than in the farming, forest and fishing sectors, says Richard Judd, University of Maine professor emeritus of history.

The sectors that were built on remarkable Maine-based innovation before the turn of the century were severely challenged in the early 1900s by changing demographics, including outmigration, and economic pressures, with major

1880 when Maine had 64,000 farms, the number declined through the first half of the 20th century. By 1955, the number of farms in Maine was 6,800, largely focused on potatoes, dairy and poultry. Yet productivity was up.

“There are fewer farms, but per acre they were more efficient, more productive,” says Judd. “Farming in general declined across the country in the 1920s, partly for the same reason — mechanization. And markets for farm produce were going down toward the end of the ’20s.

“It was rural electrification, particularly in the 1930s, that brought about a real revolution on the farm,” he says. More mechanization followed.

“Relative to farms nationwide, Maine farms were fairly small,” Judd says. “From the mid-19th century on through World War II, there was about 105 acres per farm. So mechanization is kind of a double-edged sword. Mechanization on a farm with 5,000 acres means you can amortize huge farm equipment fairly easily, but you can’t really do that on a 100acre farm, making them less competitive.

“Also during the late ’20s and particularly during the 1930s, we had massive, federally funded irrigation projects out west — Grand Coulee Dam, Hoover Dam, Glen Canyon — that helped make agriculture possible in places where you couldn’t really do that before. Huge farms — 5,000–10,000-acre farms with federally financed irrigation — were now competing with Maine farmers on their 100 acres.”

One of the next major turning points for Maine’s agricultural markets: interstate highway projects after World War II that brought the products from those large western farms to eastern markets.

“With the Eisenhower administration’s interstate highway project, now these huge farms out west were able to bring in fresh produce from California or Texas, and the competition was really fierce,” Judd says. “But looking at it another way, Maine agriculture is a story of remarkable perseverance in the face of these competitive forces. It’s really amazing what people do to survive on farms.”

The way Maine competes is in specialty crops. Wild blueberries, apples and maple sugar are among Maine’s crop strengths during this time, Judd says.

“In the sweep of history, the potato industry in Aroostook County is really the success story for Maine. Potatoes and seed potatoes,” he says. “Maine was the major American producer of potatoes for several decades until that old story of irrigation, this time in Idaho on the Snake River, created millions of acres to start growing potatoes.

“In Maine, generally there’s persistence of what we call mixed farming — farms that grow not one specialty crop so much as they grow a whole variety of grains and dairy, poultry, fruit crops, those kinds of things. That’s fairly typical of Maine south of Aroostook County.

“The other speciality crop that was extremely important, from about the 1890s and into the 1930s, was sweet corn grown primarily in the Kennebec Valley, the bread basket of Maine. Outside Aroostook County, it was our most productive region. Maine sweet corn was kind of like Maine lobster, a huge industry that really helped commercialize Maine agriculture.”

Almost every town in upland Maine had some kind of a cannery, Judd says, moving between seasons from canning corn, and beans or peas to seafood. But again, with irrigation in the West, sweet corn became a less viable crop for Maine.

Farming’s resurgence in Maine started in the 1970s, says Judd, particularly with the increase in part-time farmers and organic farmers. “Maine was very much an innovator in those particular areas, as well as in specialty farmers.”

OPPOSITE TOP: A man and a boy in a partially dug row of potatoes, circa 1918. OPPOSITE CENTER: Spring potato planting on the French Acadian farm of Leonard Gagnon, Fort Kent, 1943. LEFT: The opening of school was delayed in parts of Aroostook County so children could help pick potatoes. Near Caribou, Maine, circa 1940. BOTTOM: Prize bull owned by Robert Cunningham. Beef cattle was introduced as a supplementary source of income to potatoes. Washburn, Maine, circa 1940.

Sardine canneries at Eastport, circa 1911.

THE BIG FISH for Maine in the late 19th century was cod off the Grand Banks, and mackerel, providing Maine with thriving dried and salted fish markets to supply the big cities. But the meat packing industry in Chicago also was on the rise. Markets were changing. So, too, were the stocks.

Turn-of-the-century fishing vessel modernization, including steam- and gasoline-powered otter trawlers dragging nets, increased the catch but destroyed seabeds. Ultimately, cod, mackerel, and menhaden, the most valued species in New England waters, experienced catastrophic declines in the mid20th century, says Judd. And the coastal economy underwent a dramatic shift.

“People along the coast were going to a mixed form of fishing — occupational pluralism — moving with the seasons or with the environment from one type of staple to another,” says Judd. “They’re moving with the seasons from the groundfish industry to the herring that are canned as sardines, and the lobster industry. They might use their boats for coasting, taking goods up and down between here and Boston.

“Sometimes they’re getting cordwood off the islands — spruce for either the paper mills or for the lime industry. And other times they’re fishing, handlining for fish, spearing flatfish, or just doing a whole range of things. And that’s how they make ends meet, primarily after the big induswith multi-occupational approaches to surviving on the coast, going way back into the shipbuilding era” — is really an important draw for Maine, Judd says.

“People go out west to see natural landscapes, but people come to New England and to Maine to see not just natural landscapes, but natural landscapes that have also some cultural overlays. When you look at a landscape at the coast, you see rocks and water, fish and trees, but you also get this aura of the cultural landscape. In Maine, you can’t separate the two. It’s a natural landscape with a difference.”

MAINE has two separate tourist industries — coastal and forest, Judd says, and the latter was tied to the development of the conservation movement in the state.

“It comes out of the women’s clubs of America,” Judd says. “Also, a big impulse behind conservation in Maine is the tourism industry because they don’t want people looking out their hotel windows at a clear-cut. This is particularly true when the pulp and paper industry comes in.

“While that industry was fairly selective, only taking trees that could pay their way out of the woods and into a mill, there was concern about deforestation, erosion, flooding in the rivers and those kinds of things in a watershed, and a lot of that comes from the tourist industry.”

It was the difference between the perception of the traditional lumber industry, which was seen as somewhat selective in its harvesting practices, and the pulp and paper industry that could largely use spruce and fir of any size.

“There was a lot more conservation going on up in the woods than the conservationists thought,” Judd says. “They

tries like mackerel and cod are gone.”

The state’s canneries allowed the state’s fishing and agriculture sectors to go beyond seasonal fresh sales. So, too, did innovations between 1870 and 1910, such as lobster pounds and lobster shipping, which were tied to the state’s tourism industry, and the state’s top fishery quickly emerged.

“With a little bit of ice, a little bit of seaweed in a barrel, you could ship them all the way to St. Louis,” Judd says.

Maine’s coast and woodlands were tourist meccas and ready markets for the state’s seafood and agricultural products, including dairy. From summer colonies and hotels to wilderness hunting and fishing camps, Mainers launched their own spinoff cottage industries.

“There’s a really nice market, not only along the coast, but inland, too,” Judd says. “A good market for produce. A big market for dairy products in those hotels. And handicrafts — spinoffs from farming and fishing — from tying lures to building Rangeley boats.”

Cultural tourism — “that whole history of perseverance along the coast,

“IT’S ALWAYS BEEN A TRADITION IN MAINE TO

SOMEHOW BE ABLE TO USE THE FOREST FOR BOTH

RECREATIONAL AND COMMERCIAL PURPOSES.”

RICHARD JUDD, UMAINE PROFESSOR EMERITUS OF HISTORY

were a little bit alarmist about what was going to happen.”

It was in the best interest of the pulp and paper industry to sustain the forest, Judd says. They built multimillion-dollar mills that were viable for decades. To do that, they needed to conserve their supplies and experiment with forestry techniques.

Declines in lumber production in the second half of the 19th century were offset by the rise in pulp and paper production, says Judd. “Early manufacturers made paper from rags, which kept the industry close to metropolitan sources of fiber, but when low-cost book and newspaper printing boosted demand for paper, they turned to wood fiber, and the industry shifted northward into New Hampshire and Maine, sustaining one of the most dramatic periods of industrial expansion in the history of the two states.”

Like the agriculture and fishing sectors, the forestry industry was transformed by mechanization. The labor shortage in the woods spurred innovation through the decades, from chainsaws to skidders and feller bunchers, Judd says.

Owners of large timberland tracts often advocate for multiple use forests, but nowhere more than in Maine. Judd says “It’s always been a tradition in Maine to somehow be able to use the forest for both recreational and commercial purposes. The forest industry has made all sorts of accommodations for people using their roads, people using campgrounds. It’s a stormy relationship, but it’s one that has roots in the 19th century when we were trying to figure out who owned the North Woods and who had rights to impose limits on it.

“The compromise was that we leave the forest industry to foresters, but they would have to allow the public to come onto those lands. The concept of multiple use was really important. It’s not just anywhere that you can just walk out into the woods wherever you want. That has been an important mainstay of both forestry and tourism in the state.”

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