Nature as an Ally: An Interview with Wendell Berry

[marmar]

from Dissent magazine:



.......(snip).......

Sarah Leonard: Can you talk about how you think about your farm working?

Wendell Berry: (The British agricultural scientist) Sir Albert Howard said that in her management of the native forest—and, [Land Institute founder] Wes Jackson would say, of the native prairie—nature never farms without livestock. And Howard’s understanding of nature’s “farming” in undisturbed ecosystems is the scientific bedrock of organic agriculture....The difference, then, between a large Midwest farm practicing a corn and soybean rotation on every tillable acre and a good small farm with an orderly diversity of plants and animals is one of structure, and this is a critical difference. There is no structural complexity at all in a corn and bean rotation. The connections between people and land are dangerously oversimplified and mainly technological.

SL: And more grotesquely in meat production.

WB: You’re talking about the industrial system that confines the animals closely in one place and grows their food in another place, usually distant. This breaks the fertility cycle and violates all the principles of nature on which sustainable agriculture and a dependable food supply depend. The proper role of animals in agriculture is to complete the ecological integrity of farms, and to produce food for humans from pastures—especially pastures on land that is mainly, or entirely, suitable only for grazing.

Do you know the phrase “mind-numbing work”? This is a cliché that for a long time has been used to denigrate farming. If your economic policies drive farmers off the land, you are pleased to have saved them from “mind-numbing work”—which is usually associated with smaller farms. But if you have several thousand acres of corn, and you’re getting up in the morning to spend all day long driving a cultivator, or a sprayer, or a combine through those identical rows, day after day. . . that’s dull. And it would dull your mind. But suppose you have, say a hundred or a hundred and fifty acres of rolling land, maybe twenty-five Jersey cows, a few hogs, a garden, flowers everywhere, cliff swallows nesting against the barn wall, and children playing and wandering about. That isn’t dull. That requires hard work, of course. But it also requires constant attention and intelligence; it gives a lot of pleasure, and you’ll probably find that it depends on love.

SL: Do you think that a large portion of the population would be happy doing this kind of work?

WB: Maybe not. . . .But, you’ve switched the conversation to the question of vocation. It would be wrong to assume that every person is called to be a farmer. To use the Amish example, the agrarian community needs mechanics, manufacturers (there are things they need that we don’t make), farriers, harness makers, horse breeders, carpenters, and so on. I have never, ever said that everybody ought to be a farmer. But I do say that everybody ought to work at something useful and necessary, and not destructive. Our substitution of “job” (any “job”) for vocation is disastrous. ................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=4239

[nashville_brook]

1. auto rec for Wendell Berry

[Tumbulu]

2. My favorite writer, farmer and philosopher

I suppose I could say that he inspired me to become a farmer.