Re: Kentucky writer, farmer and advocate Wendell Berry dies at 92 • Kentucky Lantern
Hart Hagan
Wendell Berry trolls "American farm experts" (not farmers, but farm experts)
I will refer to this obituary of Wendell Berry: Wendell Berry, Writer Who Extolled America’s Agrarian Past, Dies at 92 - The New York Times
And here is another good one: Kentucky writer, farmer and advocate Wendell Berry dies at 92 • Kentucky Lantern
Writing in his 1977 book The Unsettling of America in a section titled "LET THEM EAT THE FUTURE," Berry responds to a 1970 National Geographic article written by a Mr. Jules B. Billard.
Berry describes how, in the 20th century, plants and animals were divided into separate farming operations, where the plants take chemical fertilizers, creating pollution, and the animals produce toxic waste in vast quantities.
He writes:
"Mr. Billard forgot, or he never knew, that once plants and animals were raised together on the same farms—which therefore neither produced unmanageable surpluses of manure, to be wasted and to pollute the water supply, nor depended on such quantities of commercial fertilizer. The genius of American farm experts is very well demonstrated here: they can take a solution and divide it neatly into two problems."
Time was when animals fertilized the plants, and the plants produced food for the animals and the people, with some extra to sell for cash. Then German scientists developed the Haber-Bosch process for channeling atmospheric nitrogen into fertilizer, which changed how farming was done, but for whose benefit, really, and at what cost to the soil and water?
When Berry titles the section “LET THEM EAT THE FUTURE’ he no doubt refers to the mantra “We have to feed the world,” as if degrading the soil year after year after year is the only way to feed people or future generations.
The New York Times obituary headline reads: “Wendell Berry, Writer Who Extolled America’s Agrarian Past, Dies at 92”
The headline buries Berry’s critique of industrial agriculture and how “American farm experts” (not farmers) get to decide how we will use the land.
While the obituary is not without merit, the headline removes the stinger from Berry’s portrayal of farm policy.
In 2017, Berry writes in a letter to the editor of the New York Review of Books:
“Rural America is a colony, and its economy is a colonial economy. The business of America has been largely and without apology the plundering of rural America, from which everything of value—minerals, timber, farm animals, farm crops, and ‘labor’—has been taken at the lowest possible price.”
Farmland is not controlled by farmers, or for farmers, or by consumers, or for consumers, or by citizens or for citizens. It is controlled by and for a few companies that sell fertilizers, pesticides, patented seeds, heavy equipment and diesel fuel. Their job is to extract value at any cost.
Questions for discussion
Who determines how we use the land, and for whose benefit?
Who should determine how we use the land, and for whose benefit?
Do we know American farmers who can show us how to grow healthy food in abundance, in a way that regenerates the land year after year?
If we grow food in a way that improves the land year after year, what effect will that have on the quality of the food, the quality of our water and the vigor of our ecosystems?
PS, I met Wendell Berry once, at a conference in Louisville. After lunch, he was whittling a toothpick from a larger piece of wood, using a Case knife, as if to say, “Why would I use a factory-made toothpick, when I can make one myself?”
--Kentucky writer, farmer and advocate Wendell Berry dies at 92 • Kentucky Lanternhttps://kentuckylantern.com/2026/08/31/kentucky-writer-farmer-and-advocate-wendell-berry-dies-at-92/
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Biradar Chandrashekhar
Thanks Hart Hagam for sharing this email and remembering Mr Wendell Berry.
This brings back a very special memory. While I was working in Oklahoma, with few of my orgnaic farming folks and garderners. I had the privilege of seeing Wendell Berry in Tulsa, I guess in December 2012, when he came to receive the Peggy Helmerich Distinguished Author Award and he gave a public talk on agrarin culture! I felt like my grandfather was speaking.
What struck me thst time and even more than today, how far ahead of the time he was. Many ideas we now discuss as regenerative agriculture, integrated crop-animals-people systems. His landmark The Unsettling of America (1977) certainly challenged industrial agriculture and the separation of farming from ecology, community and care for the land.
He did not just spreahced or wrioe about an agrarian philosophy, indeed he lived it, farming his own land in Kentucky while inspiring generations to rethink our relationship with soil, food, farming, community and nature. His passing at 92 is a profound loss, but his ideas are perhaps more relevant today than ever.
Wendell Berry was a great thinker, farmer, writer and steward of the land. My deepest condolences to his family and the countless people whose lives he touched. His words will live on through the landscapes and communities they continue to inspire.
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Rob Lewis
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