Wendell Berry Quotes
That we should have an agriculture based as much on petroleum as the soil-that we need petroleum exactly as much as we need food and must have it before we can eat-may seem absurd. It is absurd. It is nevertheless true.
Berry, Wendell. The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture. Sierra Club Books, 1977, p. 37.
The Depression had 25% unemployment and many people lacked even food to eat. Meanwhile, there was a huge amount of unused, idle land in California.
New agricultural techniques like drip irrigation and hydroponics lend themselves to factory style agriculture which can function in cities. At the time, Israel already did some on a commercial basis. In addition to having fresher food where the population is, the cost of transportation and use of energy for same is reduced, but may be needed for the new agricultural techniques themselves.
For many nations, it is an important objective to be totally self-sufficient in their food supply—so that they would not have to depend in other nations in what might be a world famine or food supply. For those nations agricultural subsidies are useful if their farmers cannot produce as cheaply and efficiently as other nations do. In the United States, with the most efficient agriculture in the world, subsidies are a waste of public money {633243} and the result of lobbying and special interest pressure and or corruption {633245}.
This was the origin of the term “Green Revolution”
Wendell Erdman Berry is an American novelist, poet, essayist, environmental activist, cultural critic, and farmer. He is an elected member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, a recipient of The National Humanities Medal, and the Jefferson Lecturer for 2012. He is also a 2013 Fellow of The American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Berry was named the recipient of the 2013 Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award. On January 28, 2015, he became the first living writer to be inducted into the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame.
