ABSTRACT
A more important feature of Wendell Berry's thought is his dismay that environmentalists have shown insufficient interest in good farming. As Berry would later say, industrialized agriculture allowed many people to rise above the need to feed themselves, even though none of them had ever risen above the need to eat. The post-war migration from farm to city sponsored by machinery and cheap credit resulted in an abused countryside and a drastic change in the eyes-to-acre ratio. But Berry doubts that the affection necessary for stewardship is likely to come out of institutions and organizations. Affection issues from people, not from boardrooms. Big plans and new technologies, by contrast, issue from whatever distant saviors stand to profit by them. Instead of the industrial economy, which "takes, makes, uses, and discards", Berry would place an agrarian economy, which "takes, makes, uses, and returns".
