EXCERPT: He rued how today’s economy has destroyed our own self-reliance. “We depend on suppliers for everything we have,” he said. The American farmer who grows corn or soybeans is an example of this total dependence; the farmer’s economy consists only of buying and selling. “The farmer has nothing to fall back on, nothing that he can do for himself,” he said. “There’s very little that the farmer is taking from nature.” This is in sharp contrast to an older model of farming, in which farmers could always fall back on subsistence—land under their feet that they could use—and an attitude recalled by Mr. Berry from farmers in his childhood who also kept gardens: “They may run me out, but they’ll never starve me out.”
On climate change, he said that while he acknowledges it, he finds it to be a distraction. By focusing on climate change, he said, we turn our focus away from the multitude of things that are wrong. “We need a broad-fronted economic movement to protect everything that’s worth protecting, to stop damage to everything that’s worth keeping,” he said, suggesting that such a movement would need to become part of every day life for everyone. “A whole program like that needs to be carried out by whole people who are not ashamed to use words like love, honesty and fidelity.” He also suggested that the reason we’re not seeing enough traction on climate change is that we are using the wrong tactics to make people care—fear, guilt and anger. Instead of basing our entire strategy on how scared we are about the future, we should base a strategy on love. “We all need to find things we love to do, and do them,” he said.
“We’ve been talked out of love, mercy, kindness,” he said, laying some blame at the feet of scientists who strive to reduce or quantify such qualities. “We’ve got to take those things back.”
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