Bringing It to the Table: On Farming and Food by Wendell Berry (PDF)

Description

Only a farmer could delve so deeply into the origins of food, and only a writer of Wendell Berry’s caliber could convey it with such conviction and eloquence. A progenitor of the slow food movement, Wendell Berry reminds us all to take the time to understand the basics of what we ingest. “Eating is an agriculture act,” he writes. Indeed, we are all players in the food economy. For the last five decades, Berry has embodied mindful eating through his land practices and his writing. In recognition of that influence, Michael Pollan here offers an introduction to this wonderful collection that is essential reading for anyone who cares about what they eat.Drawn from over thirty years of work, this collection joins bestsellers The Omnivore’s Dilemma, by Pollan, and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, by Barbara Kingsolver, as essential reading for anyone who cares about what they eat. The essays address such concerns as: How does organic measure up against locally grown? What are the differences between small and large farms, and how does that affect what you put on your dinner table? What can you do to support sustainable agriculture?

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Bringing It to the Table is a treasure-house of Wendell Berry’s work, an important collection of essays and excerpts gathered from his essays and fiction. A cantankerous, argumentative, eloquent writer who knows farming and food from field to table, Berry has been writing for more than forty years about the sadly declining state of American agriculture, the dangers of industrialized food farming, and the importance to the human community–and to the human body, mind, and soul–of good husbandry. If you’ve been reading Berry over the years (my husband and I chose an excerpt from The Unsettling of America for our wedding ceremony in 1986), you’ll find some jewels here, all the richer for their association with other pieces in the collection. If you’re new to Berry’s work, you’ll be astonished at his prescience: as Michael Pollan writes in his introduction, Berry is among the very first to point out the dangers of our American industrial agriculture and our disastrous separation of food production from food preparation and consumption.Bringing It to the Table is divided into three sections. In “Farming,” the essays (1971-2004) provide a compelling review of the central argument of all Berry’s work: that we must “adopt nature as measure” and create farming practices that deeply connected to the “nature of the particular place.” Industrial agriculture arming ignores and attempts to overcome the natural limits of place, seasons, soils, and resources. It is, Berry warns, “a failure on its way to being a catastrophe.”This place-focus continues in the second section, “Farmers.” It includes seven elegiac essays that describe true farmers, not dependent on fossil fuels or large farm debt, in touch with their soils, their climates, their animals–people who understand and work within the limits of responsible husbandry. These farmers range from the traditional Amish to the Land Institute, where a radical new science adopts the natural ecosystem as “the first standard of agricultural performance.”The third section, “Food,” brings farm husbandry and farm housewifery together, with excerpts from Berry’s fiction: people sitting down to eat the food they have planted, raised, harvested, cooked, and served. It is beautifully illustrated by the cover image: Grant Wood’s Dinner for Threshers. The painting frames Berry’s argument that “eating is an agricultural act,” that we must eat what is grown locally and prepared in our own kitchens, not prepackaged, precooked, premasticated. It also demonstrates what, in Berry’s view, is the central stablizing force and foundation of the agricultural partnership: that women and men work together to unite household and farm, and that “traditional farm housewifery”–helping with the work of the farm, preserving the harvest, and preparing the family’s food–is the essential contribution of women to the farm household economy. Within this context, it is an honored contribution, not to be “belittled” as “women’s work.”As we face climate change, resource depletion, financial insecurity, and health issues created by poor food choices, the sustainable production and consumption of our food will undoubtedly be one of the most challenging issues of the twenty-first century. Wendell Berry has been trying to tell us this for many decades. It’s high time we began to listen.

⭐This book is eerily prophetic but it also gives us hope that we can start doing doing better farming and start eating really food full of nutrition again.

⭐In this new book many essays have been gathered from previous works by Berry to cover the subject of farming and food all in one great book. A wonderful read for anyone who has interest in reading something by Berry and also learn what he has to say about farming and the industrial food system we now use predominantly here in America. Berry’s words are hauntingly eye opening and will make you want to grow your own food organically or find an organic grower. The stories of the old farming days in the 3rd section are beautiful and nastalgic as they speak of the abundant tables of yesteryear.Part I: FarmingNature as MeasureStupidity in ConcentrationAgricultural Solutions for Agricultural ProblemsA Defense of the Family FarmLet the Farm JudgeEnergy in AgricultureConservationist and AgrarianSanitation and the Small FarmRenewing HusbandryPart II: FarmersSeven Amish FarmsA Good Farmer of the Old schoolCharlie FisherA Talent for NecessityElmer Lapp’s PlaceOn The Soil and HealthAgriculture From the Roots Up*Note: From the author’s note prior to the start of Part III, “And so we decided to include in Part III, in addition to the lone essay, “The Pleasures of Eating”, a selection from my fiction of passages in which people eat. This is a good idea also, I think, because it unspecializes the idea of food. All the episodes from my stories and novels are not only about food but about meals. You can eat food by yourself. A meal, according to my understanding anyhow, is a communal event, bringing together family members, neighbors, even strangers. At its most ordinary, it involves hospitality, giving, receiving, and gratitude. It pleases me that in these fictional passages food is placed in its circumstances of history, work, and companionship.”Part III: FoodFrom That Distant LandFrom Hannah CoulterFrom Andy CatlettFrom “Misery”From The Memory of Old JackFrom Jayber CrowFrom Hannah CoulterThe Pleasures of EatingA thought provoking compilation of masterpieces by the intelligent author Wendell Berry. Everyone can take something from this book and change the way we eat and think about our food and how it gets from soil to table. Inspiring!

⭐book came quickly, excellent book as always from Wendell Berry…max

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