Wendell Berry: The Way of the Wise Agrarian
Wendell Berry is one of the original and few remaining voices reminding us of the fundamental beauty in the process of cultivating the land.
He has authored more than 40 books intertwining ecology, agriculture, and food, all with a poet’s precision and prose. Berry doesn’t own a computer and writes all his drafts with pen on paper. He is also an iconic and influential farmer who works his land with horses, not a tractor.
Today farming is defined by the ubiquity of technology and industrialization, yet at its core, it is a beautiful process of birth, growth, decay, and new birth.
Many dismiss Berry’s stance on agriculture as antiquated, out of touch, or plain stubborn. However, Berry’s ideas have catalyzed and inspired global conversations on local food production, ecological agriculture, connection to place, and the overall beauty and interconnectedness of life.
Farming is inherently a beautiful process. From a seed germinating to the smell of an orchard full of flowering fruit trees and the feeling of the gentle crumbling of fertile soil between the fingers, growing food is the communion of our senses with the natural world.
In one of his more well-known quotes, from his book The Unsettling of America, Berry says,
“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.”
What has always struck me about Berry’s writing is his ability to reach the heart of a topic and explain it with a depth that only years of attuned observation could produce. The quote above does exactly this. He provides an observation that is surprisingly overlooked by many who both grow and eat food, yet seems obvious once made aware of it. Soil is the foundation of life and health. We can be healed and restored through the soil, and ultimately this is what supports people and lively communities.
In a speech he gave titled “ The Future of Agriculture in 2011, Berry says,
“Hard as it may be for the dislocated, miseducated, consumptive society to accept…the future of food is not distinguishable from the future of land, which is indistinguishable in turn from the future of human care.”
Berry is unwavering in his ideals and ethics when it comes to caring for land and people. He speaks from a place few can, as a longtime steward of his own land and a dedicated family man and community member. What gives Berry even more credibility is that he consciously chose his way of life by giving up a budding writing career in New York City to return to his home of Port Royal Kentucky, a population of 64 at the time. Many people can take a firm stance and express a belief or ideal. Few people can do this from a place of living and exemplifying a belief or ideal over a lifetime. This is where Wendell Berry stands apart from the rest.
Berry’s moral underpinnings are rooted in the Christian tradition, however he refers to himself as a “marginal Christian”. His readers will quickly gather that his view of agriculture is just as influenced by Christian beliefs as his views on family and society. In a recent New Yorker interview, Berry explains the second commandment in farming terms: “If you love your neighbors you mustn’t replace them with machinery”.
After more than a decade of working in Agriculture, on many scales and contexts, I admittedly don’t see exactly how Wedell Berry’s vision of agriculture can be implemented in any reasonable time frame on a large scale. However, Berry’s vision creates the necessary tension between the unfettered rise of industrial agriculture and a more thoughtful and holistic approach. On a smaller scale, Berry has inspired many locally rooted farmers to grow food with the intention of healing land, people, and communities. This has rippled out to the farm-to-table restaurant world and many foodies alike.
Wendell Berry is truly one of a kind. He has walked his talk for a lifetime and will leave behind a wide-ranging compendium of his thoughts for future generations to reflect and act on. Will Wendell Berry be the last wise agrarian, or will his many clear and unwavering words seed the next crop?
Cover image: Cradling Wheat; a painting by Thomas Hart Benton
