I’ve added a new “gadget.” It will list farmers and agricultural producers who are working to restore the proper scale to our agricultural economy. The economic scale of things will be my next serious post. It’s on chickens, a pair of shoes and the red Rudge. To set the table, so to speak, consider this from Wendell Berry’s essay “Six Agricultural Fallacies.”
“1. That agriculture may be understood and dealt with as an industry.
This assumption is false, first of all, because agriculture deals with living things and biological processes, whereas the materials of industry are not alive and the processes are mechanical. That agriculture can produce only out of the lives of living creatures means that it cannot for very long escape the qualitative standard; that is, in addition to productivity, efficiency, decent earnings, and so on, is must have health. Thus, the farmer differs from the industrialist in that the farmer is necessarily a nurturer, a preserver of the health of creatures.
Second, whereas a factory has a limited life expectancy, the life of a healthy farm is unlimited … the topsoil, if properly used and maintained, will not wear out. Some agricultural soils have remained in continuous use for four or five thousand years or more.
Third, the motives of agriculture are fundamentally different from the motives of industry …
Finally, the economy of industry is inimical to the economy of agriculture. The economy of industry is, typically, an extractive economy: It takes, makes, uses, and discards; it progresses, that is, from exhaustion to pollution. Agriculture, on the other hand, rightly belongs to a replenishing economy, which takes, makes, uses and returns. It involves the return to the source, not just fertility or of so-called wastes, but also of care and affection…”
From “Home Economics: Fourteen Essays by Wendell Berry”
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