Berry’s The Unsettling of America, published in 1977, is considered a conservationist’s manifesto for an alternative to the industrial, commoditized farming that was rapidly scaling up at the time.
He famously debated former Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz (who told farmers to “get big or get out” and to plant crops “from fencerow to fencerow”) and spent a lifetime raising awareness about the plight of small farmers and rural America both in his writing and through his civic disobedience.
Berry had his critics. Some found his writing on rural life idealized and believed the agriculture he advocated was incapable of feeding a modern, global population. Many wrestled with the complicated political implications of his writing, despite (or because of) Berry’s animosity toward politics.
In recent years, his writing has been quoted by liberal reformers alongside conservative idealogues, and some progressives saw an individual moralism that belied the participatory politics they believed was necessary to shift systems.
However, Berry’s work undoubtedly paved the way for the sustainable food and farming movement in the U.S. today. It inspired countless young people to take up farming, writers to explore rural life in new and deeper ways, and eaters to consider the connection between farms and the food on their plates.
Wendell Berry at home ca. 1960. (Photo credit: James Baker Hall via The Berry Center)
“We still (sometimes) remember that we cannot be free if our minds and voices are controlled by someone else. But we have neglected to understand that we cannot be free if our food and its sources are controlled by someone else,” he wrote in “The Pleasures of Eating” in 1989. “The condition of the passive consumer of food is not a democratic condition. One reason to eat responsibly is to live free.”
Through his work and life, Berry carved a deep and wide path, writing more than 50 books, including fiction and cultural and environmental criticism. He was honored with the National Humanities Medal by President Barack Obama in 2011, and, in 2016, was the recipient of the Ivan Sandrof Life Achievement Award from the National Book Critics Circle.
The Berry Center in New Castle, Kentucky, was launched in 2011 by Mary Berry, his daughter, to preserve the legacy of his work through an archive, culture center, and several farming initiatives, including a focus on small- and mid-scale farms, land conservation in rural communities, and supporting local food systems.
We asked some of Berry’s many fans to celebrate and remember him with us.
Clara Coleman, founder/executive director of Real Farmer Care
I was at the Young Farmers Conference at Stone Barns, and my father, Eliot Coleman, and I and Wendell and his daughter Mary were standing together, and Wendell was waiting to be introduced before giving a speech. We all shared some small talk before Mary made the comment, “Well, here we all are standing up for the health of agriculture, and funny that we have two sets of father daughter farming combos at this one conference, one tall and one small, but both with equal stature and impact. I feel honored to be in the presence of such change-makers.” And Wendell smiled, turned to my father, winked, and said, “Ah yes, and we need our daughters to keep us honest and humble, don’t we?”
Will Harris, author, rancher, White Oak Pastures
There will be no replacement for Wendell Berry in my trove of heroes. I didn’t have much room for hero storage, and he pretty much occupied it. Years ago, I was asked by an interviewer what three people had most influenced my life.
My first choice was my Dad. (Not a very surprising first response to this question from a 1954 Model Agrarian Son-of-the-South.) My second choice was Mr. Berry. And . . . I simply could not come up with another name. I tried.
When Random House approached me about writing A Bold Return To Giving A Damn, I told them that I’d not read many books and that I certainly couldn’t write one. They managed my shortcoming by employing a brilliant third-party author, and she made me get the book written. When she finished the book, I sent the draft copy to Mr. Berry. (I wasn’t supposed to do that.) He made some incredible improvements to it, but I got into a helluva lot of trouble with Random House.
There are a couple of other stories that I’d like to share, but there is a thing called the statute of limitations. Mr. Berry influenced my life, and the lives of so many of my peers, more than anyone. Anyone. Thank you for your guidance, Sir.
Anna Lappé, executive director, Global Alliance for the Future of Food
I can still remember the first time I read Wendell Berry’s “The Peace of the Wild Things,” 26 years ago on the wall of a writers’ retreat north of San Francisco. I would wake each morning, surrounded by a blanket of fog and the bishop pines, coast live oaks, and Douglas firs that call Point Reyes home and read his words:
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
Written in 1968, Wendell penned this poem long before the climate crisis had escalated to the point where climate grief sits heavy on our hearts and the suffering and loss of life from extreme weather events is ever present.
Yet, these words, calling to us from more than half a century ago, resonate today. In his life’s work as a poet and a farmer, this was Wendell Berry’s gift as a visionary, lifting up a vision of farming with nature not against it, of living alongside the natural world as comrades not commanders.
Mas Masumoto, organic peach and nectarine farmer and the author of nine books
I consumed the words of Wendell Berry as I forged a life on our family farm. He opened a door to realize that our peaches only grew with a community of people around us. I once met Wendell during a chance meeting including Wes Jackson.
We were a bunch of farmers talking—a seamless blend as we complained about weather, worried over prices, and then added stories of climate and nature with people and words (and poetry!).
Wendell Berry helped me connect my farm with the world: farming was more than just dirt and sweat, it must include the social and political worlds that feed us. Berry wrote “Eating is an agricultural act” which inspired many to foster the belief: “Eating is a political act.”
His writing helped me forge my own truths about family farming: Eating is about nature and human nature, it’s about people and their stories. I was inspired to be both a farmer and writer. I hoped to see the world through his writing cabin window, to witness and capture the meaning and purpose of the world through my organic peach trees.
Berry planted in me the seed to understand that: People and neighbors matter. The soil and nature matter. Eating stories matters.
Kathleen Merrigan, former U.S. Deputy Secretary of Agriculture and the inaugural executive director of the Swette Center for Sustainable Food Systems at Arizona State University
I have many memories and I’m finding it hard to pick one. I remember Wendell speaking before the Young Farmers conference at Stone Barns Center back in 2013.
