Episode 161: Mary Berry
from The Farm Report
In 1977, Wendell Berry published The Unsettling of America, a book that started a national and international conversation on the state of agriculture in our country. The Berry Center’s mission is to continue his work by bringing focus, knowledge, and cohesiveness to the work of changing our ruinous industrial agriculture system into a culture that uses nature as the standard, that accepts no permanent damage to the ecosphere, and that takes into consideration human health in local communities. Tune in to The Farm Report, as Erin Fairbanks is joined by Mary Berry who describes some of the work the center is focusing on and some of the problems we face as a nation made up of small communities in our quest to improve the agricultural landscape in this great country. This program was sponsored by S. Wallace Edwards and Sons. “I just read a speech my grandfathers gave to congress in the 1940s and with a few minor changes the same speech could be given today and be completely relevant.” [10:50] “If I think about the whole world – I don’t matter all that much. If I think about America, what can I really do? I took it down to the state, to the county, to the town and then to the farm that I live. At that point, then you find out that everything you do matters. So you start there, you start on the ground.” [17:45] “Too often the local food movement thinks only of fruits and vegetables. We’ve got to think about calories and grain is an essential piece of this.” [26:00] “We need a flourishing rural America to make our food secure.” [31:40] —May Berry on The Farm Report
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