Agrarianism and the Good Society: Land, Culture, Conflict, and Hope

Introduction

One way to judge a people is to look at the ways they use nature— the land, broadly defined to include its soils, rocks, waters, plants, animals, and sustaining processes. A culture writes its name on land for all to see. Is the soil kept fertile and in place? Are waterways clean and full of life? Are tracts of land devoted to uses for which they are ecologically well suited? Are landscapes sensibly laid out and pleasing to the eye and ear? And are the modes of living and working on land likely to endure for centuries, without nature lashing back? The land reflects not just what people have done but who they are, what they understand, what they value, and what they dream. Good land use is challenging enough on a single land parcel, tended by a single steward. Those who have tried the task know what it entails, particularly when land is ecologically sensitive. The challenge expands when we shift scales and talk about good land use over entire landscapes. Going further (as we need to), let us assume that the dozens or hundreds of people tending these lands need to make a decent living. Economics is important, and so the inquiry broadens further. Land use does not take place in isolation, socially, economically, or ecologically. It occurs within a social order that surrounds and includes the land and land manager. And so we bring in contemporary culture, broadly conceived to cover economic relations and political structures as well as our values, loyalties , affections, and institutions. INTRODUCTION 2 Agrarianism and the Good Society Good land use is likely to occur—not merely on parcels here and there but everywhere—only when it stands as a shared aspiration . Society must embrace the goal and work toward it. This need for social support has always been with us, but now it is urgent. Land-use practices are increasingly guided by global economic forces. Degradation unfolds at broader and broader scales. Dead zones grow in the Gulf of Mexico because of land uses hundreds of miles away. Forested mountaintops in Appalachia are shoved aside to extract coal for distant power plants. Meanwhile, expansive farm fields in the corn belt are stripped bare of all visible life—they are hardly more diverse biologically than parking lots—by owners who respond to global price signals that ignore all local considerations . To get good land use, it is not enough to educate capable farmers and foresters; good culture is also necessary. And good culture does not come easily. Good culture would honor land and the wise use of it. Necessarily it would honor the skills and labor required to bring it about. This would be, literally, an agriculture, from Greek and Latin roots meaning field, land, and land cultivation; a form of agrarianism centered on the widespread use and good tending of all types of land. What kind of culture is needed to take care of land, given the economic and political realities of our day? What elements of modern culture require challenge and alteration if good land use is to become our ideal and duty? What might a land-respecting politics look like, and what kinds of leaders would we need to place good land use on the national agenda? These are the questions I take up, in an effort to envision a culture that is well rooted and planning to stay put. When talking about land-related ailments—soil erosion, urban sprawl, sagging farms, deteriorating neighborhoods, wildlife habitat loss—our tendency is to refer to them as environmental problems . The implication is that the earth is somehow at fault for them. But the true causes are rooted in human behavior, as we know in our quiet moments. Environmental problems arise because we are not living well on land. 3 Introduction Our responses to our land-related ills tend to take two forms (aside from mere denial). The less common response is for individuals to detach themselves from the system that produces the ailments , to live apart from the destructive practices of the age. Get back to the land, disconnect from the electric grid, and cut unnecessary ties with the industrial juggernaut. More frequent than this simple-living response are the various efforts made to diminish our system’s bad consequences by working within it. The activism here typically accepts the dominant language and modes of thought of the...