Before leaving on this leg of my bike journey across Kansas, I discussed with a friend my concern about the heat. Kansas had a cold winter and spring.  Then suddenly in May temperatures hit the 90s and stayed there.  I considered it bad luck.  A friend retorted: there is no good time to bike Kansas. I conceded. Jetstreams collide here, creating atmospheric volatility.  Whether it be extreme cold and heat, tornadoes, the stiff south wind, or thunderstorms that seem to arise from nowhere, Kansas weather can punish any time of year.  My only solution: leave very early in the morning. Today I was off before sun up.

Coyotes were still hunting. The sun rose over the wheat.

All manner of truck joined me on the road, thankfully usually giving me a wide berth. Drivers waved.

I arrived in White City before 7AM.  The route took me past Agri Trails Coop.

This used to be a small coop, but now is owned by a large conglomerate.  Yesterday, attempting to escape the heat, I and the uncle of my best friend from college—who runs the family farm where I stayed the last few days—discussed how farming in this region of the country has changed over the last several decades.  Conglomeration, it will not surprise, is a big part of the story.  What caught me were how the details shape the landscape. BNSF, the train company that serves the region—itself a conglomerate of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway and Burlington Northern—will not accept a small load of grain.  They require 100 loaded cars to run. This explained the long line up of railcars at the edge of this field this morning outside White City.

I ran into this train later down the road at the next Agri Trails Coop.

This time I was thankful for the 100 cars.  It gave me an excuse to stop and eat something before taking on the second half of the increasingly hot journey.

In this part of the world, the wheat in these cars once was king. Vestiges of their reign remain.  Today I stopped at this iconic field. I listened to the the grain rustling in the south wind.

Tonite in Salina I visited the Sacred Heart Catholic Cathedral, whose columns are the shape of grain elevators

Down the road I beheld the abandoned Lee Warren Milling Company silos and milling facilities.  Salina used to be one of the largest millers of wheat in the world.  It supplied flour not just to private consumers, but to large scale baking operations like General Mills, and Salina’s very own Tony’s pizza (which reportedly uses 200 acres of wheat a day).

Wheat fortunes always have been subject to the volatile weather. This year there is a severe drought. Wheat and other crops are short.

Drought is a recurrent worry.  The middle of Kansas is the transitional zone from trees to prairie. The rains are unpredictable.  The conditions are on the edge of what can sustain trees and water hungry crops. Unstable weather is part of what makes farming not just hard work, but a gamble. When the rains do come, they are often patchy.  Tonite, as the storm clouds gather, some places may get doused.  Others will remain bone dry.

The volatility is also political. Train shipping rates can change, forever changing the profitability of local production of a commodity like flour.  A new President may be elected who draws out of major trade deals, leading to great uncertainty in the markets.  A new financial technology can increase the money made off of crop price speculation, greatly increasing price fluctuations.  All turn farming into as much a financial gamble as hard work.

Much work is done to try and stabilize these lands, to ensure that they continue to produce. The inputs of sweat, labor and chemicals are palpable on the road.

Chemical sprayer treating field

My precarity on the bike—subject not only to the blistering sun, but also blowing chemicals and blasts of wind and dirt from trucks—is part of the land’s precarity. For me, promises of friendship are not enough to ignore the risks.

Ultimately I was relieved when some of this precarity and hard labor ended. No patch of pavement ever made me happier than this one encountered after an hour of slogging out 8 miles on gravel.

Ultimately, I arrived here, the Land Institute.

For the last 42 years it has attempted to create more stable ground for plants and humans.  More on this soon.