Re-connecting to the Land

...As a business, American agriculture is extraordinarily efficient and as long as food is affordable and plentiful, people will not spend much time thinking about agriculture. As a lifestyle, Americans generally value the "idea" of the family farm but being more than two or three generations away from direct involvement in farming they have little personal commitment or interest. On the other hand, Americans may be able to develop a more personal understanding of agriculture as a means to connect with the earth, as "a conversation with universe." This conversation begins with the simple act of eating.

Wendell Berry wrote that "...eating is an agricultural act. Most eaters, however, are no longer aware that this is true." Everyone living has no choice but to participate in agriculture through the act of food consumption. This can be either a sterile, hurried act, offering little cause for joy -- or a creative, spiritual act of connecting with the earth and thus with all of Creation. According to Berry "when food, in the minds of eaters, is no longer associated with farming and with the land, then the eaters are suffering a kind of cultural amnesia that is misleading and dangerous."  This amnesia prevents humans from valuing the contribution agriculture makes to their lives as a source of both physical and spiritual nourishment.

How we eat is an expression of our commitment to larger social values, such as community and democracy. Berry writes; "...we cannot be free if our minds and voices are controlled by someone else. But we have neglected to understand that neither can we be free if our food and its sources are controlled by someone else. The condition of the passive consumer of food is not a democratic condition. One reason to eat responsibly is to live free."

Read more here.

After working on Brigida's farm in Brasil, learning about biodynamic agriculture and reading Frances Moore Lappé's Hope's Edge, I knew that agriculture--in particular organic farming--would be a major focal point in my life. The more and more I looked into it, the more I realised that food is the most essential way in which we define our relationships with our environment and with each other.  I have a hunch that re-connecting to the land would make us remember better who we are and why we are here.  Eating is the most basic of human needs;  will we choose to nourish ourselves with sterile efficiency or with a sacred connection to all that is?