TIME November 6, 2017‘We had poultry
and two milk
cows, and we
fattened two
meat hogs
every year. It’s
extremely
gratifying to sit
down to a meal
you’ve grown
every bit of.’5 Questions
Wendell Berry The writer, activist and
farmer on his new book,The Art of Loading
Brush, and the future of American land
aren’t improving out here in this newly
discovered rural America. Actually, it
was discovered a long time ago by the
Republicans and the corporations—the
Democrats had forgotten it for quite a
long time, and they’ve just rediscovered
it. Forty years ago, I wrote a book called
The Unsettling of America. The tragedy
of that book is that it’s still pertinent.
If it had gone out of print because of
irrelevance, it would have been a much
happier book. In 1977, I thought that the
farming population was at a disastrous
low. Now it’s somewhere below 1%.Your main concern with economists
is that they think commodities
can always come from somewhere
else. This has been a dominant idea
throughout our history: if you don’t
have it here, you can get it from
somewhere else. If you use up this
commodity here, you can’t produce
it here anymore, you’ve worn out
the possibility here, get it from
somewhere else. Or if you’re
short of labor or you’re too good
for certain kinds of labor, go to
Africa and get some slaves. That
recourse has haunted us, has
plagued us to death.What’s growing on your farm
these days? Grass and trees. We
have just handed over our ewe
flock and the use of our pastures
to some neighbors to increase
the production capacity of their
flock and their pastures. Our
farming operation is pretty much
reduced. We’re experiencing the
expectable reduction of strength
and endurance. We had a big
garden when the children were
young and we were young and
strong. We raised virtually
everything we ate. We had
poultry and two milk cows, and
we fattened two meat hogs every
year, and a calf, and grew the big
garden. It’s extremely gratifying
to sit down to a meal you’ve grown
every bit of. —SARAH BEGLEYYou talk about a new generation
of “homecomers.” What does
that mean? By homecomer, I mean
somebody who’s gone away and
come back to the farm or to the
local community. To rural America.
Somebody who followed the universal
advice that they couldn’t amount to
anything where they grew up and have
gone away and have found reason to
come back. I visited a cheese co-op
in Vermont. The members were not
getting rich, but you could say they
were thriving or prospering in a modest
way, which would be quite enough if
everybody were doing that.
What do you say to environmental-
ists who believe it would be better
for more people to live in cities? The
more people who live in cities, the fewer
there are who have knowledge of what
I’m calling the economic landscapes.
So that’s the wrong way to get a lobby
for better land care. There’s nobody
lobbying for the best use of farming and
forest and mining landscapes. This has
been a kind of sore point with me for
a long time. You have to understand,
I’ve been at this for more than 50 years,
and my allies and I have done no good.
For land use and land maintenance in
those economic landscapes, we have
done no good. We’ve not ever been able
to put any meaningful restraints on
the coal industry. They’ve done what
they wanted to do. So-called farming
has become increasingly dependent on
toxic chemicals. There’s still too much
soil erosion.
Why are farmers suffering? The
problem is surplus production. As
long as they remain solvent and their
farms remain productive, there’s no
way farmers can stop themselves from
overproducing without help from the
government.
Your wife says your principal asset
as a writer has been your “knack
for repeating yourself.” Why keep
repeating yourself? Because things
GUY MENDES