Matthew Henry John Bartlett

Said Wendell Berry at the ‘Fast Food World’ conference in 2003:

After long practice I can say all I know in eight minutes. Evenutally it’ll be a haiku. My starting point is the failure of the environmental movement to envision and promote a conserving, land-based economy. The movement has failed to forsee or envision a mean between the pristine and the utterly spoiled. There’s talk now, among biologists, of dividing the world 50-50 between nature preserves and industrial farming & forestry. But this abandons any hope of harmony between human life and the life of the world. Without which, neither can be preserved. We have failed to address the issue of local adaptation. Which is a law from which no species is exempt, including our own. And we are now farther from obedience to that law than we have ever been before. The present land economy of farming, forestry and so on rest on a foundation of general ignorance. Most of us don’t know how we live, or at what cost either ecologically or humanly. We speak sentimentally of a ‘sense of place’ and of having ‘roots’, but a sense of place, if it is of any real worth, consists of a set of correct practical solutions to local problems. Why are locally adapted economies necessary? We have talked enough, maybe, about the pleasures of fresh, tasty, locally-produced food. We have not talked nearly enough, about the vulnerablilty of economic systems that are both global and centralised. Their vulnerability, that is, to epidemics, terrorism, and other forms of human and natural violence. Nor have we acknowledged clearly enough that these very extensive systems are entirely dependant on cheap transportation, which is entirely dependant on cheap petroleum. It now sends that petroleum, for which there is no substitute is going to become more expensive in money, and perhaps in blood. And so we have got to begin again to think about limits – ecological & moral. For how long can we maintain the industrialist superstition that we can feed the world by destroying the world’s capacity to produce food? And are we, in the developed nations really prepared to feed oursevles by buying food off the plates of people in poorer countries? What are we Americans to think of ourselves, who find it easy to condemn the negro slavery of the Old South, and equally easy to live off the labour of racially denominated wage-slaves in fields and factories here and elsewhere? The world is limited in land, water, fertility and energy. In such a world, people with moral limits must develop their local economies, must shorten their supply lines and take responsibility for their economic influence. Unless we believe that cheap long-distance transportation is somehow infinite we cannot justify the destruction of any local capacity to produce necessary goods. A due regard to local economy does not preclude a regional, national or a global economy. Nor does the existence of the larger economies necessarily interfere with the proper development of local economies so long as the principles of subsitence and surplus are respected throughout. Only the surplus should be exploited, after local needs have been met. The surplus can then be passed along as charity, or as comodoties fairly priced. The principles of subsitence, charity and fair pricing belong to an economy of neighbourliness are directly opposed to the principles of the industrial economy and the so-called free market.