Abstract
In 1944 the National Flying Farmers organized at Stillwater, Oklahoma. The organization took advantage of aviation's wartime growth to promote flight as an integral part of agricultural life that would modernize production, break down social barriers, and give farmers greater access to markets. It also built on aviation's roots in the agricultural landscapes of the Midwest and Great Plains as well as the strategic role these spaces would come to play in the Cold War. In addition to giving farmers greater control over their land and work, flight was more broadly imagined to connect the agricultural heartland with consumers abroad, making the region the capital of the United States' “aviation empire.” Although the Flying Famers failed to achieve their broader goals, the organization's early history provides further evidence of the international scope of farm life in the postwar era.
