No Hall

What's the plant?

Oats, and some weeds. Hence the title; it's a bit of a lame joke. Hall & Oates.

Ah, it'd be more clearly a lame joke if I could recognize oats. I don't think I've ever seen them. Beans, corn, potatoes, canola - yes - all around me.

The colour remind me of some bean fields at the end of summer, which glow a real reddish gold when the sun hits them right.

Fields like these are pretty common around here; they are usually part of efforts to manage biodiversity. A century ago or so, the landscape was more varied, with small plots of land with crops like oats, barley, buckwheat and rye alternated with hedgerows and woods. Then in the 1950s, agricultural modernization involved a combination of merging smaller plots of land together, drainage to drop the water table and a transition to corn and grass. Presently, there's quite a bit going on in terms of landscape reconstruction. I have no doubt that the field photographed here is actually subsidized significantly, as there's no way it would be economically feasible as it is. Moreover, there's a good chance it won't be harvested to begin with and the crop will be entirely or at least partly be left on the field to support the local fauna.

What you said about the reddish glow is also what caught my eye in this field. There's a substantial variety of species in it (bluntly put, it's infested by weeds) which makes for a more diverse palette than you'd normally get on a modern crop field. I'm not sure if the photo really works at this small size; I printed it at 15" width and even that's very much on the small side to convey the message. Overall it just didn't come out entirely as I would have hoped; subjects like these I find tricky to get just right, despite their apparent simplicity. Btw, this is also the kind of image that I've really run into the limitations of small format color negative with; it just doesn't cut it, which is why I've been shooting much more digital lately.

There is a dynamism you experience looking at the light in and through something like this field that is basically impossible to get into a photo. Maybe large format slide film can come close.

I'm not sure how the subsidies work here, but all fields are harvested. But most fields are owned by very large companies. That's why there are so many derelict farmhouses around here.

I hear you on the dynamism; it's there in a literal sense, in how the crop undulates as the breeze strokes it, but it's also there in the myriad hue variations and patterns even if you freeze time. Indeed, large format film can capture it; and so far I'm enjoying the resolution that something like a d800 yields and printed on larger formats. Size matters, sometimes.

We have seen (and continue to see) a similar tendency towards intensification and increasing scale. At this point, it seems that our agricultural system is hitting the limits of what society is prepared to bear (we've long surpassed the limits of what's ecologically bearable by any stretch of the imagination), so I wonder what the future will bring. Personally, I'd welcome a new business model where better profitability would allow for downsizing and 'smarter' land use. This will require behavioral changes at a large scale, however, and also changes to the financial structuring of the food value chain. Both are exceedingly difficult challenges, so I'm not overly optimistic in our collective ability to really improve matters.

Well, the farm land here gets bought up and used until the encroaching residential developments eventually take its place. Also, there must be a hundred farms around here owned by a petroleum company - growing corn. The trend is definitely away from downsizing. It's practically impossible for someone now to go buy such a farm without far more money than the crops will make in a decade.

It's perverse, isn't it? Something's gotta give...