The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture by Wendell Berry

[forestofglory]

So I have mixed feeling about Wendell Berry. On the one hand he firmly links conservation and agriculture, and writes about the problems of modern agriculture in lovely prose. On the other hand he is a social conservative and a bit vague about solution to these problems. Berry seems to believe that if we all lived according to the Jeffersonian agrarian ideal we all be happier, healthier, more moral, better citizens and have better marriages. Which I think is a bit much. Also I don't believe that changes in scale alone can solve today's agricultural problems. So I tend to agree with the board points in this book, but not some of the narrower ones, and I do enjoy the prose.