“The true measure of agriculture is not the sophistication of its equipment, the size of its income, or even the statistics of its productivity, but the good health of the land,” wrote [Wendell] Berry…in 1977.

He stressed that the “increase in overhead, debt, and dependence on machines” in the agricultural sector “is a matter of complex significance, and its agricultural significance cannot be disentangled from its cultural significance.”

The Unsettling of America was one of more than 50 works published by Berry, whose commitment to interdependent community-building, small farms, and the protection of nature was woven into his fiction, poems, and essays alike.