LAND-USE ETHICS
'New agrarianism' reflects renewed interest in land stewardship

Mark Reutter, Business Editor
(217) 333-0568; mreutter@uiuc.edu

9/1/2001

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — People are reinvigorating their ties to the land both practically and in the ways they think about themselves and their communities, a University of Illinois law professor argues in a forthcoming book.

Dubbing the trend "the new agrarianism," Eric T. Freyfogle says evidence of land-sensitive practices appear in grower-buyer co-ops that promote organically grown foods, farmers who eschew chemicals and genetically modified crops, and families who try to integrate their work and leisure in harmonious ways with nature.

"It is a temperament and a moral orientation as well as a suite of economic practices, all arising out of the insistent truth that people everywhere are part of the land community," he wrote.

Freyfogle, who teaches property, environmental and natural resources law in the UI College of Law, is the editor of "The New Agrarianism: Land, Culture and the Community of Life," a collection of essays to be published at the end of this month by Island Press.

The new ethic differs from the Jeffersonian ideal of the pioneering yeoman farmer in that it is based on practices that sustain rather than conquer the land. But the movement shares the same core concerns of Jefferson and others who sought to promote "natural fertility, healthy families and the maintenance of durable links between people and place."

Several tenets of the movement run counter to the market-driven philosophy of today’s agribusiness, according to Freyfogle.

"Dissenting from the modern view, agrarians believe that those who buy products are implicated morally in their production, just as those who discard waste items are morally involved in their final end." The movement is also critical of "free-trade policies that pit landowners in one part of the globe against landowners in another," and in practice do not award the most efficient so much as those "whose lands are most naturally endowed and whose land ethics are lowest."

The book's essays examine the resurgence of land-friendly practices and values in rural areas, suburbs and even cities. Among the 13 contributors are farmer and essayist Wendell Berry and environmental historian Donald Worster. Other essays are by Scott Russell Sanders, a professor of English at Indiana University and the author of "Staying Put"; David W. Orr, the head of the environmental studies program at Oberlin College and the author of "Earth in Mind"; David Kline, who operates an organic dairy farm in Ohio and co-founded "Farming Magazine" with his wife; and Stephanie Mills, the author of "Whatever Happened to Ecology?"

Today's agrarian writers have a far different story to recount than the pastoral tales of Jefferson’s time. "Not Eden but a battle-weary land commonly greets the agrarian pilgrim today, a land marred by eroded hills, polluted rivers and biologically impoverished forests," Freyfogle wrote.