Thursday, September 29, 2011

Homage to Wendell Berry

This is an article by Michael Pollan paying homage to Wendell Berry. Since the 1960s and 70s, Berry has been insisting on the need for an agrarian ethic that links the way we eat to the way we farm to the way we live and die. Pollan rightly points to Berry as the spiritual father of those of us who have become concerned about food and farming in the past few years. And to think, if I found it difficult to be an advocate for sustainable food systems in the early 2000s, when our nation was more concerned with dot coms and terrorism than with the ecological and social ramifications of how we farm, or if I was often frustrated in 2005 when I was trying to run a community garden a year or two before the public at large knew or gave a damn about urban farming, how patient must Berry be to have been a voice in the wilderness for forty years before anyone paid much mind?

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