The Art of Loading Brush

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Wendell Berry. The Art of Loading Brush

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Praise for The Art of Loading Brush

Finalist for the 2018 Southern Book Prize

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The concept of parity, as fair-minded as it is necessary, addresses one of the problems of farming and farmers in the industrial economy. Another such problem, more fundamental and most in need of understanding, is that of overproduction. “Other gainful employment” in the cities escapes this problem because the large industrial corporations have not characteristically overproduced. Overproduction moreover is not a problem of subsistence farming, or of those enterprises of any farm that are devoted to the subsistence of the farm family. The aim of the traditional economy of the farm household—a garden, poultry, family milk cow, meat animals, vines, fruit trees—was plenty, enough for the family to eat in season and to preserve, plus some to share or to sell. Surpluses and scraps were fed to the dogs or the livestock. There were no leftovers.

Surplus production is a risk native to commercial agriculture. This is because farmers individually and collectively do not know, and cannot learn ahead of time, the extent either of public need or of market demand. Given the right weather and the “progressive” application of technologies, their failure to control production, even in their own interest, is thus inevitable. This is not so much because they won’t, but because, on their own, they can’t. Either because the market is good and they are encouraged, or because the market is bad and they are desperate, farmers tend to produce as much as they can. They tend logically, and almost by nature, toward overproduction. In the absence of imposed limits, overproduction will fairly predictably occur in agriculture as long as farmers and the land remain productive. It has only to be allowed by a political indifference prescribed by evangels of the “free market.” For the corporate purchasers the low price attendant upon overproduction is the greatest benefit, as for farmers it is the singular cruelty, of the current agricultural economy. Farm subsidies without production controls further encourage overproduction. In times of high costs and low prices, such subsidies are paid ultimately, and quickly, to the corporations.

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