The Broken Promise of Agricultural Progress: An environmental history

Cameron Muir’s work “The Broken Promise of Agricultural Progress” is an excellent example of what environmental history can achieve. He traces the development of agriculture in a particular region, Australia’s New South Wales, from the 1840s to the end of the 20th century. In essence, it is a history of failed attempts; a story of changing attitudes and anxieties, of temporary fads and grand hopes, of conflicts and contradictions. New South Wales is not a land that lends itself easily to agriculture, yet Australians have time and time again tried to reap profit from this land through livestock, groundwater exploitation, and intensive crop cultivation.