The New Agrarianism: Land, Culture, and the Community of Life

334 Pages·2001·16.74 MB·English

by  Eric T. Freyfogle

A SHEARWATER BOOK

The New
Agrarianism
Land, Culture, and the Community of Life
Eric T. Freyfogle
Island Press / SHEARW ATER BOOKS
Washington • Covelo • London
A Shearwater Book
Published by Island Press
Copyright © 2001 by Island Press
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright
Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any
means without permission in writing from the publisher: Island Press,
1718 Connecticut Avenue, N.W., Suite 300, Washington, DC 20009.
Shearwater Books is a trademark of The Center for Resource Economics.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The new agrarianism : land, culture, and the community of life I Eric T.
Freyfogle, editor.
p. em.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ).
ISBN 1-55963-920-2 (cloth: alk. paper)-ISBN 1-55963-921-0 (paper:
alk. paper)
1. Land tenure-Environmental aspects-United States. 2. Land use
Environmental aspects-United States. 3. Sustainable agriculture-United
States. 4. Conservation and natural resources-United States. 5. Human
ecology-United States. I. Freyfogle, Eric T.
HD205 .N49 2001
333.73-dc21 2001004025
British Cataloguing-in-Publication data available.
@
Printed on recycled, acid-free paper
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Mercy and Bill Davison,
julianne Lutz Newton, and Todd Wildermuth
Who is the land? We are, but no less the meanest flower
that blows.
-Aldo Leopold
For nitrates are not the land, nor phosphates; and the
length of fiber in the cotton is not the land. Carbon is not
the man, nor salt nor water nor calcium. He is all these, but
he is more, much more; and the land is much more than its
analysis.
-John Steinbeck
There is no way to separate feeling from knowledge.
There is no way to separate object from subject. There is
no good way and no good reason to separate mind or body
from its ecological and emotional context.
-David Orr
We will always be rewarded if we give the land credit for
more than we imagine, and if we imagine it as being more
complex even than language.
-Barry Lopez
The defence and salvation of the body by daily bread is still
a study, a religion, and a desire.
-Thomas Hardy
The higher processes of art are all processes of simplifica
tion.
-Willa Cather
Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. ...
-Matthew 6:28
It seems wiser to be moderate in our expectations of
nature, and respectful; and out of so simple a thing as
respect for the physical earth and its teeming life comes a
primary joy, which is an inexhaustible source of arts and
religions and philosophies.
-John Crowe Ransom
Blessed is the man who loves the soil!
-John Burroughs
It has never been our national goal to become native to this
place. It has never seemed necessary even to begin such a
journey. And now, almost too late, we perceive its necessity.
-Wes Jackson
It is the most arrant presentism to say that a philosophy
cannot be practiced because the philosophy is found in the
past and the past is now gone.
-Richard Weaver
We can lie to ourselves about many things, but if we lie
about our relationship to the land, the land itself will suf
fer, and soon we and all other creatures that share the land
will suffer.
-Scott Russell Sanders
Where is our comfort but in the free, uninvolved, finally
mysterious beauty and grace of this world that we did not
make, that has no price? Where is our sanity but there?
Where is our pleasure but in working and resting kindly
in the presence of this world?
-Wendell Berry