Magnum opus
Auburn Fisheries Pioneer Explains Why Alabama Agriculture Canât Catch Up
by
Sisyphus was a cruel, conniving mythological king of Corinth whose ultimate punishment was an eternity in Hades, pushing a large boulder up a hill, watching it roll back down as he neared the top and then starting over, and over, forever. The author of a new book on the history of U.S. and Alabama food and fiber production from prehistoric to modern times likens Alabama agriculture to Sisyphusâs struggleâendless, toilsome and futile.
Eddie Wayne Shell has a suggestion for folks who buy his new book.
âIt makes a mighty good doorstop,â he says. âYou sure canât do much else with it.â
At first glance, you might be tempted to agree. The 880-page volume is just shy of 2 inches thick, weighs in at 5.2 pounds and, from cover to cover, is nothing but text. Not the first picture, table or illustration to be found, page after 8 ½- by-11-inch page.
The titleââEvolution of the Alabama Agroecosystem: Always Keeping Up but Never Catching Upââmight be off-putting, too.
But donât let those details scare you away, because the exhaustive narrative that Shell, an Auburn University professor emeritus in fisheries, has produced is an absorbing, surprisingly readable account of how geological, biological, cultural, economic and political characteristics over the past 350 million years have shaped the stateâs agricultural ecosystem. Most of the bookâs focus, however, is on changes that have taken place in the past two centuries.
âSince the USDA started collecting data, corn and soybean yields, milk-per-cow and rental rates for cropland in Alabama and the South have been much lower than Midwestern states,â Shell says. âThe book explores the role of ecosystem characteristics in the evolution of our generally poorly competitive agriculture, and, in turn, how uncompetitive agriculture has led to a poorly performing overall economy.â
Montgomery-based NewSouth Books released Shellâs magnum opus in January, but the hardback is only about half of the story. The restâ
1,500 figures and tables referenced in the textâare available online only.
âI wish they were in the book where I meant for them to be, but the thing would have to come with wheels attached so you could move it,â Shell says.
Born in 1930 in rural Butler County, Alabama, Shell grew up helping his father make a go of a chicken-and-egg operation and, later, helping his grandfather fight a ceaseless battle to keep the familyâs subsistence-level row-crop operation afloat. Realizing the limited future farming held for him, Shell enrolled in Alabama Polytechnic Institute, where he earned his bachelorâs and masterâs degrees in fisheries management.
He completed his Ph.D. at Cornell University and in 1959 returned to Auburn as a fisheries department faculty member. In his 35 years on the facultyâ20 of those as head of what now is the School of Fisheries, Aquaculture and Aquatic SciencesâShell played a pivotal role in developing Alabamaâs commercial catfish industry and in building Auburn fisheries into one of the top programs of its kind in the world. He is the namesake of the E.W. Shell Fisheries Center on Auburnâs North Auburn campus.
Though Shell has long had vivid memories of his familyâs farming struggles, he says it wasnât until the 1980s, when he started working in Extension programs statewide, that he realized the sad state of Alabama agriculture.
âI was shocked,â he says. âNobody had ever told me how unbelievably uncompetitive Alabama agriculture is. I thought, âHow can this be?â I kept thinking about that, and finally I promised myself that, once I retired, I was going to find out if that was true and, if it was, what makes it so, and then write a book about it.â
He retired from Auburn in 1994 and, taking breaks now and then to RV with wife Jean, launched the mammoth project that would become âEvolution.â
âEvolution of the Alabama Agroecosystemâ is, for Shell, a life goal achieved. But he isnât shutting down his computer just yet; already, the 83-year-old is working on his next book, a complete history of the Auburn fisheries program. He has found that penning books has its rewards.
âWriting sure has got me out of a lot of yard work over the last 19 years,â Shell says. âAny time Jean tells me I need to go do such-and-such out in the yard, I just say, âI canât right now; Iâve got to finish this book.ââ
âEvolution of the Alabama Agroecosystemâ is available from the AU Bookstore,Amazon.com and NewSouth Books.
Contact
OFFICE OF AG COMMUNICATIONS & MARKETING
Auburn University College of Agriculture
Alabama Agricultural Experiment Station
3 COMER HALL
AUBURN, AL 36849
334-844-2783 (PHONE)
agcomm@auburn.edu