ABSTRACT
The topic of praxis lies closest to the primary concerns of makers of agricultural policy, for praxis deals with how people act to make their visions of a better future come true. Wendell Berry and Charles Walters are critics of contemporary agriculture and envision a future distinctly different from the present. Berry advocates a new relationship between people and land. He envisions a fully settled landscape, in which families would have roots in a particular place, in which more people would be engaged in an agriculture based on kind and careful land use. Berry accepts that scientists can plausibly point out sufficient sources of energy to expand energy intensive agriculture. Berry, in contrast, sees conventional agriculture as trying to sustain an unworkable present by seducing with fantasies of the future. He insists that all historical situations bring the possibility of living responsibly.
