The first casualties of exploitation are character and community. Wendell Berry

This was a prophetic book in 77 and it's still a sobering read today, given that our alienation from the land, our embrace of specialization resulting in food sources that are less resistant to blight, pests, invasive species, drought or any of the challenges faced by farmers. The book bears reading even for an audience not familiar with agriculture because of the broader picture - that a society accepting of exploitation of land and natural resources tends to be accepting of the exploitation of people. Berry's exploration of the margins, of the healing and regeneration needed between growing cycles, and of the necessity of diversity are lessons that address many wrongs still being committed not only by agribusiness but any industry that commodifies what once was considered a part of the membership of the community. ( )

This book is part rant and part musing on culture and society. The rants, while sometimes entertaining, are often tied to then-current events (although not without relevance to modern debates on food and farming).

The musings are much more relevant. While Barry does not reject technology and growth outright, he does caution strongly against letting them run without restraint. Underlying his thoughts are a concern for wholeness and sustainability. We are, he thinks, backing ourselves into a corner where the future is being sacrificed for the present, and where that sacrifice is being presented as inevitable. Thus, he is against large agribusiness farms not because he sees them as inherently evil, but because he seems them using the land in a way that will destroy it in 100 years and because he seems them as relying on unsustainable amounts of external inputs, especially from non-renewable resources such as oil. He wants to farm the land now in ways that will preserve its production capacity.

It is this focus on sustainability, in the deepest sense of the word, that resonates so strongly with me. Even though I come to different conclusions than he would on many specific issues, I feel a discussion of those disagreement would be focused on which techniques better meet the same underlying goals, rather than arguments about the goals themselves.

A random selection of the quotes I noted while reading:

pg 41: But as a social or economic goal, bigness is totalitarian; it establishes an inevitable tendency toward the one that will be biggest of all.

pg 58: But the only possible guarantee of the future is responsible behavior in the present. When supposed future needs are used to justify our misbehavior in the present, as is the tendency with us, then we are both perverting the present and diminishing the future.

pg 82: The question at issue, then, is not of distinction but of balance. The ideal seems to be that the living part of our technology should not be devalued or overpowered by the mechanical.

pg 91: Skill, in the best sense, is the enactment or the acknowledgement or the signature of responsibility to other lives; it is the practical understanding of value. Its opposite is not merely unskillfulness, but ignorance of source, dependencies, and relationships.

pg 173-174: Our history forbids us to be surprised that an orthodoxy of though should become narrow, rigid, mercenary, morally corrupt, and vengeful against dissenters. This has happened over and over again. It might be thought the maturity of orthodoxy; it is what finally happens to a mind once it has consented to be orthodox. ... one who presumes to know the truth does not look for it. ... If change is to come, then, it will have to come from the outside. It will have to come from the margins.

pg 206: Without appropriate controls, one has no proof; one does not, in any respectable sense, have an experiment.

pg 218: Any criticism of an established way, if it is to be valid, must have as its standard not only a need, but a better way. It must show that a better way is desirable, and it must give examples to show that it is possible.

pg 219: Second, as a people, we must learn to think again of human energy, our energy, not as something to be saved, but as something to be used and to be enjoyed in use. We must understand that our strength is, first of all, strength of body, and that this strength cannot thrive except in useful, decent, satisfying, comely work. There is no such thing as a reservoir of bodily energy. By saving it -- as our ideals of labor-saving and luxury bid us to do -- we simply waste it, and waste much else along with it.

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Berry's characteristically clear and opinionated style can be seen coming into its own here. Not my favorite, but I can understand why this was his breakthrough piece. ( )

A challenging critique of the last half century of agricultural policy and the coinciding societal shift away from rural, communal living to urban individualism. ( )

Thoroughly enjoyed this book. Have read a few of Berry's other books, but this is, so far, at least, my favorite. He tied together a lot of the issues that are now plaguing us. I had to remind myself that he was writing this in the mid 1970s. We are still struggling today with the problems of soil loss, agribusiness control of our agriculture, resultant poor overall health of people, etc. Berry expresses a deep understanding as to how all of these, while treated as separate, are indeed intimately connected. Ultimately, he stresses that we are all part of this Earth and need to recognize our connection to it and to each other. That insight alone makes reading this book worthwhile, and there is so much more besides that.
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