How Wendell Berry helps us negotiate our post-agrarian condition

When I first read Wendell Berry’s parabolic novels, I began to notice the recurring word place. His characters demonstrate that a healthy life is all about place: specifically, having a farm to honor, love, respect, and care for.

In Berry’s world that agrarian perspective is in profound tension with industrial agriculture’s ways and means.

This collection of essays is part lament for what is being lost as industrial practices crowd out agrarian ones, part advocacy for a recovery of prior values, and part testimony to the difference that can be made by the wise exercise of land care.