The Unsettling of America: Culture & AgricultureSierra Club Books, 1978 - 228 pages "The Unsettling of America" is Wendell Berry's personal, dramatic inquiry into the way in which we use the land that sustains us. For the roots of our attitudes toward farming, Berry goes back to the industrial revolution, which promised freedom from physical toil, and to the "conquistador" mentality that ruled the settlement of North America, treating land, resources, and ultimately people as infinitely expendable. Out of this history comes a disturbing, and officially sanctioned, vision of the farm of the future -- where the supreme value is maximum production, where the environment is to be controlled by technology, and where a man has no place. Berry challenges these and other orthodox values and assumptions: techniques of cultivation that damage the soil and sacrifice quality to mere abundance; the reliance on huge inputs of energy to fuel machines and manufacture chemicals; the "get big or get out" philosophy that has driven millions of farmers from the land and "unsettled" whole communities. This is above all a book that will change minds, a work of passion, eloquence, and conviction. -- From publisher's description. |
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acres agri agribusiness Amish animals become Billard body Butz C. S. LEWIS chemicals complex conservation consumer corn cost Creation crop crop rotation culture dependent destroy destruction discipline disease Draft Horse earth ecological economic energy erosion experts exploitive farm farmers farmland feed fertility fidelity fields future geologic fault Hideous Strength horses household human Ibid industrial interest issue Ivan Illich Jefferson kind labor land land-grant college less living look machines manure margins marriage means mechanical ment mind modern moral natural necessary nurture Odysseus once organic organic farm pasture percent plants plow pollution possible practical preserve problems production Professor Heady responsibility revolution rural Section 347a sense sexual simply Sir Albert Howard skill social soil sort soul sources standard sumers survive things Thomas Jefferson tion tractor trees understand waste Wendell Berry wilderness