The philosophy of Wendell Berry: making agriculture and culture an enduring part of our life on this earth
July 28, 2022
Written by Wendell Berry in 1977, The Unsettling of America discusses how good farming in the United States has been taken away from its cultural context by embracing industrialized operations while also reducing crop yields significantly over time. According to Berry, good farming is spiritual discipline that should be managed by families. In addition, it should be based on relationships with the land, animals, and plants. Good farming also means being good stewards of the resources that are available. Below are a few key takeaways of his philosophy.
The importance of connecting with the land: physically and spiritually
Connecting with our soil is an essential part of healing and restoring life. Without proper care for the earth, we can never hope to create communities that are healthy. Berry writes: “The soil is the great connector of lives, the source and destination of all. It is the healer and restorer and resurrector, by which disease passes into health, age into youth, death into life. Without proper care for it we can have no community, because without proper care for it we can have no life.” For Berry, there is an important link between spirituality and cultivating land: “It is possible, I think, to say that... a Christian agriculture [is] formed upon the understanding that it is sinful for people to misuse or destroy what they did not make. The Creation is a unique, irreplaceable gift, therefore to be used with humility, respect, and skill.”
The farmer as quintessential nurturer
According to Berry, there are two different kinds of minds: those that focus on the here-and-now, and others who search for meaning in life. One type may be referred to as "exploitative” or focused primarily on making money while caring little about their own well-being; another might foster an environment where people's needs come first rather than exploiting them simply because he can profit from doing so at any given time. "The exploiter is a specialist, an expert; the nurturer is not. The standard of the exploiter is efficiency; the standard of the nurturer is care. The exploiter's goal is money, profit; the nurturer's goal is health -- his land's health, his own, his family's, his community's, his country's." The exploiter typically thinks in terms of numbers, quantities and "hard facts". The nurturer on the other hand believes that there is more than just science or data for making decisions. For Berry, the farmer is the quintessential nurturer.
The problem with an “environment” versus a “homeland”
According to Berry, the term “environment” is problematic in that it oversimplifies the world around us; he finds the terms “dwelling” and “homeland” much more evocative of how land, community and everything around us influences our lives. “We have given up the understanding -- dropped it out of our language and so out of our thought -- that we and our country create one another, depend on one another, are literally part of one another; that our land passes in and out of our bodies just as our bodies pass in and out of our land; that as we and our land are part of one another, so all who are living as neighbors here, human and plant and animal, are part of one another, and so cannot possibly flourish alone; that, therefore, our culture must be our response to our place, our culture and our place are images of each other and inseparable from each other, and so neither can be better than they other.” In other words, the way we interact with our environment shapes who we are as individuals, and vice versa. This is why Berry believes that it is so important to have a strong connection to the land that we live on. If we think of our environment simply as a resource to be exploited, then we will never truly appreciate or understand its importance.
Why donations can never replace action
A development model that consists solely of giving, particularly in financial terms, is inherently flawed according to Berry. “The money is given in lieu of action, thought, care, time. And it is no remedy for the fragmentation of character and consciousness that is the consequence of specialization. At the simplest, most practical level, it would be difficult for most of us to give enough in donations to good causes to compensate for, much less remedy, the damage done by the money that is taken from us and used destructively by various agencies of the government and by the corporations that hold us in captive dependence on their products. Most important, even if we could give enough to overbalance the official and corporate misuse of our money, we would still not solve the problem: the willingness to be represented by money involves a submission to the modern divisions of character and community. The remedy safeguards the disease.”
The weaponization of food
He discusses the world’s agricultural order as a top-down, industrial monoculture supported by oil and gas. Imposed on the world in the name of efficiency, he argues that it has failed economically as well as ecologically although its effects are somewhat hidden. He sees the food system as a weapon in that it is just another tool in the hands of those who already have too much power. “To think of food as a weapon, or of a weapon as food, may give an illusory security and wealth to a few, but it strikes directly at the life of all. The concept of food-as-weapon is not surprisingly the doctrine of a Department of Agriculture that is being used as an instrument of foreign political and economic speculation. This militarizing of food is the greatest threat so far raised against the farmland and the farm communities of this country. If present attitudes continue, we may expect government policies that will encourage the destruction, by overuse, of farmland. This exclusive emphasis on production will accelerate the mechanization and chemicalization of farming, increase the price of land, increase overhead and operating costs, and thereby further diminish the farm population. Thus the tendency, if not the intention is to complete the deliverance of American agriculture into the hands of corporations.”
A crisis of human energy
He sees the energy crisis (as relevant now as it was in 1977) not as a result of dwindling resources, but as an inevitable consequence of our overconsumption and lack of restraint. “The fantasists in government and industry have us believe that we can pursue our ideals of affluence, comfort, mobility, and leisure indefinitely. This curious faith is predicated on the notion that we will soon develop unlimited new sources of energy: domestic oil fields, shale oil, gasified coal, nuclear power, solar energy, and so on. This is fantastical cause the basic cause of the energy crisis is not scarcity; it is moral ignorance and weakness of character. We don't know how to use energy, or what to use it for. And we cannot restrain ourselves. Our time is characterized as much by the abuse and waste of human energy as it is by the abuse and waste of fossil fuel energy. Nuclear power, if we are to believe its advocates, is presumably going to be well used by the same mentality that has egregiously devalued and misapplied man- and womanpower. If we had an unlimited supply of solar or wind power, we would use that destructively, too, for the same reasons.” We live in a society that runs on money and greed, and this has led us to value things that are harmful to both ourselves and the environment. We need to learn how to use energy wisely, and this can only be done if we change our values and learn to live more simply.
A powerful critique of the industrialized food system, Berry's book is a call to action for farmers to return to these traditional methods and to reject the industrialized model of farming. In doing so, he argues, they will be able to produce food that is healthier and more sustainable. Additionally, they will be able to create a more just and equitable food system.
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