Bringing It to the Table. Wendell Berry
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as many species, as possible.
In terms of our country’s agriculture as a whole, too, it means the diversity of species. But it also means as many different kinds of good agriculture as possible: farms changing in kind, as necessary, from one location to another; but also truck farms and part-time farms near cities, to increase local self-sufficiency and independence; and home gardens everywhere, in the cities as well as in the country.
4. The Problem of Quality. Quality, as I shall understand it here, is indistinguishable from health—bodily health, coming from good food, but also economic, political, cultural, and spiritual health. All these kinds of health are related. And I hope that my discussion of the other problems has begun to make clear how dependent health is on good work.
INDUSTRIAL AGRICULTURE HAS tended to look on the farmer as a “worker”—a sort of obsolete but not yet dispensable machine—acting on the advice of scientists and economists. We have neglected the truth that a good farmer is a craftsman of the highest order, a kind of artist. It is the good work of good farmers—nothing else—that ensures a sufficiency of food over the long term.
Ignoring that, industrial economics has encouraged poor work on the farm. I believe that it has done so because poor work can be easily priced. Since poor work lasts only a short time, the money value of its whole life can be readily calculated. Good work, which in fact or influence endures beyond the foresight of economists, can be valued but not priced, because its worth is incalculable. I am talking about the difference, say, between a wire fence and a stone wall, or between any gasoline engine and any good breed of livestock.
I am more and more convinced that the only guarantee of quality in practice lies in the subsistence principle—that is, in the use of the product by the producer—a principle depreciated virtually out of existence by industrial agriculture. Indeed, it is sometimes offered as one of the benefits of industrial agriculture that farm families now patronize the supermarkets just like city people. On the other hand, it can be well argued that people who use their own products will be as concerned for quality as for quantity, whereas people who produce exclusively for the market will be mainly interested in quantity.
It will be noticed that production is not on my list of problems. The reason is that if the four problems I have dealt with are properly solved, production will not be a problem. Good production is merely the result of good farming.
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