The Agricultural Crisis as a Crisis of Culture

Wendell Berry examines the cultural shift of small family farming to large industrialized agriculture. Farming communities are being reduced in size to make room for the crops of big business. The desire for greater efficiency and production has replaced workmanship pride and the culture that came with it. Before this most food produced was raised by the families themselves or as a collaborative effort of the entire community. When modern mechanized farming techniques profits became greater due to technological advances the benefits became more centralized to those who exploited it the most. "I remember, during the fifties, the outrage with which our political leaders spoke of the forced removal of the populations of villages in communist countries. I also remember that at the same time, in Washington, the word on farming was "Get big or get out" -a policy which is still in effect and which has taken an enormous toll. The only difference is that of method: the fore used by the communists was military; with us, it has been economic- a "free market" in which the freest were the richest. The attitudes are equally cruel, and I believe that results will prove equally damaging, not just to the concerns of human value and spirit, but to the practicalities of survival.. And this community killing agriculture, with its monomia of bigness, is not primarily the work of farmers, though it has burgeoned on their weaknesses. It is experts, the bureaucrats, and the "agribuisnessmen," who have promoted so-called efficiency at the expense of community (and of real efficiency), and quantity at the expense of quality." This has shifted the decision making from local farmers to agri-corporations with a personal agenda which is to maximize production and efficiency rather then supply a healthy sustainable communities of the work force. What is lost the is the quality that had been valued so greatly by the previous system, now disregarded more and more by the general public. This is causing catastrophic health and environmental damge as well as a destroying a type of culture that lay the foundation to civilization, the farmer's culture.

Citations:
The Agricultural Crisis as a Crisis of Culture
by Wendell Berry

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