In this episode I’m interviewing Executive Director of The Berry Center Mary Berry. Mary is the daughter of famous American farmer, poet and philosopher Wendell Berry who wrote the iconic The Unsettling of America in 1977.
We’re discussing Mary’s commitment to her mission to revitalize rural America by supporting small farmers and advocating for responsible, sustainable agricultural practices. We’re also covering themes from The Unsettling as well as the ever increasing and accelerating incursion of technology into farming which has almost completely eroded natural human connection to land and food.
Links and interview references:
The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture
Since its publication in 1977, The Unsettling of America has been recognized as a classic of American letters. In it, Wendell Berry argues that good farming is a cultural and spiritual discipline…
https://www.penguin.com.au/books/the-unsettling-of-america-9781619025998
The Berry Center is putting Wendell Berry’s writings to work by advocating for small farmers, land-conserving communities, and healthy regional economies.
The Berry Center established Our Home Place Meat in 2017 to develop a cooperative for small to midsize livestock farmers to sell local meat to regional markets.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3IrxBIWiu0
Dyson Farming Project - https://dysonfarming.com
Roundup Cancer Lawsuit Update - https://www.millerandzois.com/products-liability/roundup-cancer-lawsuits/
“The Great Agricultural Takeover”, short essay by Wendell Berry. https://sustainablehuman.org/speaker/wendell-berry/
The Sycamore – Wendell Berry
In the place that is my own place, whose earth
I am shaped in and must bear, there is an old tree growing,
a great sycamore that is a wondrous healer of itself.
Fences have been tied to it, nails driven into it,
hacks and whittles cut in it, the lightning has burned it.
There is no year it has flourished in that has not harmed it.
There is a hollow in it
that is its death, though its living brims whitely
at the lip of the darkness and flows outward.
Over all its scars has come the seamless white
of the bark. It bears the gnarls of its history
healed over. It has risen to a strange perfection
in the warp and bending of its long growth.
It has gathered all accidents into its purpose.
It has become the intention and radiance of its dark fate.
It is a fact, sublime, mystical and unassailable.
In all the country there is no other like it.
I recognize in it a principle, an indwelling
the same as itself, and greater, that I would be ruled by.
I see that it stands in its place and feeds upon it,
and is fed upon, and is native, and maker.
Wendell Berry
