Excerpt
THOUGH we still live from the land, as we always have and always must, we now live with the land less than ever before. To live with something is, by implication, to live intimately or companionably with it. This relation implies mutuality of interest, interdependence, familiarity, affection, care. When herbicides fall with the rain, we are living with chemistry, not with the land.
In our relation to the land, we are ruled by terms and limits set, not by anyone's preference, but by nature and by human nature:
▸ Land that is used will be ruined unless it is properly cared for.
▸ Land cannot be properly cared for by people who do not know it intimately, who do not know how to care for it, who are not strongly motivated to care for it, and who cannot afford to care for it.
▸ People cannot be adequately motivated to care for land by general principles or by incentives that are merely …
Footnotes
Wendell Berry is a farmer, writer, and professor of English at the University of Kentucky, Port Royal, 40058. This article is based on his presentation during the keynote session of SWS's recent 46th annual meeting in Lexington, Kentucky.
- Copyright 1991 by the Soil and Water Conservation Society
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