America had an ideology of country living before it had cities. Jeffersonianism, Emersonianism, and agrarian populism were robust value systems that became more potent as the nineteenth century progressed. The philosophy of country living included its own version of political history, a theology uniting God, soil, and the farmer, an ambiguous vision of capitalism, a theory of economic justice, a notion of agrarian community, and a rich tapestry of grievances concerning the portion of earthly wealth that fell to the farmer.
The explosion of city growth, the shift of the nation's political attention to industrialism, and the failure of agrarian populism at the national ballot box submerged the agrarian ideology before 1914. As the diversified family farm nearly disappeared from the countryside, agrarianism nearly disappeared from the popular imagination. Farmers were disparaged as ignorant fools. Farmers who were successful were lauded as industrialists of the land--but not as farmers.
In the 1960s and 1970s, agrarianism re-emerged, bobbing like a buoy on the surging social change of those tumultuous decades. A new agrarianism was patched together from environmentalism, ecology, nature preservation, a religious sense of the stewardship of the earth, the organic food movement, a back-to-the-land impulse, communalism, and a New Age reaction against the unrelenting materialism of the city. Reaching an age to start their families, some baby boomers turned away from suburbs as well as cities in an effort to recreate the healthy, extended family and community they believed existed about the time of their grandparents. Whole foods, natural child birth, and self-sufficiency seemed somehow more appropriate on God's little acre of earth than in a hospital room with fluorescent lighting and cream-colored walls.
Full Circle Organic Farm, Floyd, Virginia.
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The writings of Wendell Berry exemplify the new agrarianism. As an ideology, it mixes a conservative attachment to soil and rural tradition with a radical critique of capitalism and conventional farming. For Berry, farming is more than a livelihood; it is--or should be--a redemptive way of life in harmony with nature. It requires, moreover, a farming culture with a wide social base that shares and supports a kindly treatment of farmer's land, crops, and animals. No farmer farms alone.
In Berry's view, conventional farming destroys the soil. It is akin to strip mining (this critical analogy is an old one, too). The conventional farmer is alienated from the land and works in opposition to nature. Berry's critique is an expanded, elegant version of the long-standing criticism of American agricultural experts that conventional American farming leads to exhaustion of the soil and abandonment of the land. Farmers move on to new lands, because they have destroyed their old lands with poor farming practices. When they run out of new lands to run to, they turn to welfare.
Berry's agrarian vision is based in the belief that all who live on the land must live with respect for and in harmony with the natural processes by which land is made healthy and that health is preserved.
"We must change our lives, so that it will be possible to live by the ... assumption that what is good for the world will be good for us. And that requires that we make the effort to know the world and to learn what is good for it. We must learn to cooperate in its processes, and to yield to its limits. But even more, we must learn to acknowledge that the creation is full of mystery; we will never entirely understand it. We must abandon arrogance and stand in awe." (Wendell Berry, "A Native Hill" [1969], The Art of the Commonplace; the Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry, Norman Wirzba, editor, 2002, p. 20.)
Whether or not one shares Berry's vision, we should not doubt that re-establishing diversified family farming, expanding organic farming, nurturing the land-based rural economy, as well as protecting and reviving commodity agriculture, and rebuilding rural society require a set of country living values. What is needed is, in a word, a philosophy of country life.
Wurdack Farm, Missouri Agricultural Experiment Station demonstration farm.
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As a practical matter, advocates of country living need a vision to present themselves and to counter urban and industrial ideologies and the political philosophies that support them. Urbanism and industrialism are well articulated by the many interests in their growth. Labor unions, financial companies, city and state governments, broadcast media, construction trades and builders, pop culture and fashion are among the many groups invested in urban growth and prosperity.
Promoters of country living are as diverse group of interests as city people. Rural residents, environmentalists, conservationists, wildlife and wilderness preservationists, bird watchers, hunters, enthusiasts of outdoor recreation, and the second home industry line up uneasily with the farmers to oppose the juggernaut of urban sprawl and industrial intrusion into the countryside. But the interests that divide the groups that support country living should not prevent a coalition from being formed.
We must imagine the coalition addressing an audience, such as a state legislature. The coalition needs to project a unified point of view for the legislators to be able to understand their problems and the solutions they request. Country living is not a product like cheese or Angus beef to be marketed with a brand, advertising, product samples, and a consumer help line; nonetheless, a coalition for country living must obtain political influence by convincing others of its values. Commercial marketing provides a helpful model.
Contents
A Theory of Rural Life
1. What is Country Living?
2. Social-Economic Classes.
3. Conditions for Successful Production.
4 pt. 1. Land-Use Stability.
4 pt. 2. Landscape Preservation.
5. Country Living Values.
6. What Are Values?
7. A Home Place.
8. Education and Identity.
9. Marketing the Countryside.
10. Conclusions and Recommendations.
(Revised, April 7, 9, 2007.)
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