[Terrapreta] You Are What You Grow

[lou gold]

Thank you David for putting Wendell Berry into the discussion. "Unsettling"
gave me my first glimpse of the political-economic-scientific-intellectual
and "rational"  methods employed to desecrate the earth. Back then,
Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz said "get big or get out." Later,
Schumacher countered with "small is beautiful" and, as you say, much has
happened since.

The old terra preta cultures lived in an enchanted forest. Modernity
necessarily attacked many of the old "superstitions" but the baby was thrown
out with the bathwater. Now, as we replant the mission in modern ways, we
will need a new narrative of sacredness -- something that carries us beyond
the realm of the gods of greed.

Best to ya.

lou

On 9/8/07, David Yarrow <dyarrow at nycap.rr.com> wrote:
>
>  30 years ago poet, English professor and Kentucky farmer Wendell Berry
> published "The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture" -- powerful and
> deep inspection of the steady degradation of agriculture into agribusiness.
> the central and longest chapter was "The Body and the Earth," which
> illuminated the parallels between how society, science and medicine treat
> the human body, and how farming degrades, devitalalizes and despiritualizes
> the land, soil and stewardship. michael pollan offers a similar analysis,
> more from a nutritional view.
>
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