ABSTRACT
Merrill was playing with the dual meaning of culture, substituting the meaning having to do with the tilling of the soil with the meaning we have in mind when we use the phrase human culture. In this latter sense, culture is an integrated system of human knowledge, belief, and behavior. So Merrill was essentially warning us that agriculture was being drained of its humanity-that the values, behaviors, and social relationships that once supported a stewardship orientation to farmland were falling away.
