Classic Wendell Berry material but written more simply with short,
declarative sentences and therefore more eloquent and more powerful than
some of his earlier essays. Happy to see the adjustment. Where I was
earlier put off by the English professorshippiness, here I am enchanted by
the flow.
Alas, I find Berry still a provincial romantic disconnected from national
and international economic reality. With the exception of a tiny percentage
of food produced by ecologically sensitive growers able to sell to upscale
markets, the preponderance of world food is produced for volume profit and
ecology and energy input be damned. I wish it were otherwise and I, like so
many members of this list, strive to be the husband and steward of my land.
But agribusiness will have no truck with such uneconomic should-dos until
it is forced by governmental regulation or energy shortages.
In my lifetime I hope to see Jim Hightower, Wes Jackson, Wendell Berry and
similars on an advisory committee to the Secretary of Agriculture that has
real clout. I am breathing freely.