The Gift of Good Land: Further Essays Cultural and Agricultural is again available in paperback, published by Counterpoint (Berkeley, CA). I've finally begun to weave through these essays by Wendell Berry, written mostly between 1979 and 1981, when the collection was originally released.Through these essays, most of which were originally published in magazines, Berry questions the true value and costs of economies of scale, the basis of the Cold War era United States Department of Agriculture ethic of "Get Big or Get Out". With my professional background in wholesale distribution sales and marketing, I've always put great faith in economies of scale and the benefits of driving the costs out of distribution, out of the supply change. However, based upon the UMNH Book Club reading, I have come to question our current industrial food system, and the viability of the small farmer. Have the economies of scale gone too far? Are we losing from land fertility, biodiversity, economic sustainability and community culture more that we are gaining?
These are issues Berry raised 30 years ago, and yet it seems that only in the past five years have they started to hit the national dialogue. What has caused our national community to be so slow to respond to Berry's call for small farming and the protection of biodiversity as well as the health of humans, animals, and soil? Does the “fault” lay within our "get big or get out" culture? Is it a lack of understanding on the part of especially urban and metropolitan citizens? Is it because of the strength of special interest and agribusiness on policy? And what are the land-use policies within our own state? Are they supportive of small-scale farming and sustainable agriculture??
Our partner in the Wendell Berry discussion is the Wallace Stegner Center for Land, Resources and the Environment, an excellent program within the S.J. Quinney College of Law at the University of Utah. The Stegner Center brought Wendell Berry to Utah this past March as part of the Stegner Symposium, which celebrated the centennial of Wallace Stegner's birth and explored his legacy in the West.
The last time we partnered with the Stegner Center, we discussed Robert Keiter's book, Keeping Faith with Nature: Ecosystems, Democracy, and America's Public Lands. Keiter himself participated in our book club discussion. I was struck by his perspective, as a lawyer, on how Congress takes a long view of local resolution on conservation, preservation, and land-use issues, before establishing federal policy, perhaps 30 or more years. Is that the same case with small farming practices and agricultural land-use policies? Are there examples of local communities taking back some of the small farming practices and land-use allocations toward a more diverse and sustainable agriculture and food system?
Joining our discussion of Berry's essays on Monday, September 21, will be Amy Wildermuth, an environmental law professor and Wendell Berry aficionado, representing the Stegner Center. Amy has invited her brother, Todd Wildermuth, to join the conversation as well. Todd's areas of expertise include land use and agricultural policy, plus he's a Berry fan as well. I'd love to be a guest at their family gathering table, but, in lieu of that, we look forward to talking with Amy and Todd over the next couple of weeks both at the book club and here on the blog.
With the harvest and more farmer's markets than ever in full-swing, it is a good time to join the community conversation on agricultural land use. There are several initiatives percolating and I invite anyone involved in land use, small farming practices and local food production to join the conversation. I understand that a group, working in conjunction with the Salt Lake City Mayor's Office, has formed to (re) establish a Food Policy Council along the Wasatch Front. Slow Food Utah is hosting Time for Lunch Campaign on Monday, September 7, to inspire locals to take a stand on improving children's health. And just last month, the Salt Lake Tribune ran two interesting articles relating to these issues:
- On 8/13/09, Dawn House wrote in the Business Section on the challenges of finding available land for small, local farming.
- On 8/18/09, Jeremiah Stettler wrote on plans to increase urban farming in Salt Lake County.
