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The primary motive for good care and good use of the land-community is always going to be affection, which is too often lacking.

Wendell Berry

Why should conservationists have a positive interest in… farming? There are lots of reasons, but the plainest is: Conservationists eat.
WENDELL BERRY

Conservationist Farm Interest Lot Plainest Positive Readon
Industrial agriculture characteristically proceeds by single solutions to single problems: If you want the most money from your land this year, grow the crops for which the market price is highest.
WENDELL BERRY

Agriculture Characteristically Industrial Problem Proceed Single Solution
I was a bright boy and I ought to make something out of myself… something else that would be a cut or two above my humble origins.
WENDELL BERRY

Above Boy Bright Else Humble Make Myself Origin Out Something
When you are new at sheep-raising and your ewe has a lamb, your impulse is to stay there and help it nurse and see to it and all. After a while, you know that the best thing you can do is walk out of the barn.
WENDELL BERRY

All Help Impulse IT Lamb New Nurse Raise See Sheep Stay When
If I was freer than I had ever been in my life, I was not yet entirely free, for I still hung on to an idea that had been set deep in me by all my schooling so far:
WENDELL BERRY

Been Deep Entirely Ever Far Free Idea Life Schooling Set So Still
The old and honorable idea of ‘vocation’ is simply that we each are called, by God, or by our gifts, or by our preference, to a kind of good work for which we are particularly fitted.
WENDELL BERRY

Call Each Gift God Honorable Idea Kind Old Our Preference Simply Vocation
If we can’t afford to take good care of the land that feeds us, we’re in an insurmountable mess.
WENDELL BERRY

Afford Care Feed God Land Take Us
It is not from ourselves that we learn to be better than we are.
WENDELL BERRY

Are Better From Learn Ourselves We
We cannot know the whole truth, which belongs to God alone, but our task nevertheless is to seek to know what is true.
WENDELL BERRY

Alone Belong God Know Nevertheless Seek Take True Truth Whose
Urban conservationists may feel entitled to be unconcerned about food production because they are not farmers. But they can’t be let off so easily, for they are all farming by proxy.
WENDELL BERRY

Conservationist Entitle Farmer Feel Food Production Unconcern Urban
We cannot comprehend what comprehends us.
WENDELL BERRY

Comprehend Us What
To hear of a thousand deaths in war is terrible, and we ‘know’ that it is. But as it registers on our hearts, it is not more terrible than one death fully imagined.
WENDELL BERRY

Death Hear Know Terrible Thousand War
Better than any argument is to rise at dawn and pick dew-wet red berries in a cup.
WENDELL BERRY

Argument Berry Better Cup Dew Drawn Pick Red Rise Than Wet
Annual plants are nature’s emergency medical service, seeded in sounds and scars to hold the land until the perennial cover is re-established.
WENDELL BERRY

Annual Cover Emergency Hold Medical Nature Perennial Plant Scar Seed Service Sound Until
The past is our definition. We may strive with good reason to escape it, or to escape what is bad in it. But we will escape it only by adding something better to it.
WENDELL BERRY

Add Bad Better Definition Escape Food May Past Reason Something Strive
If conservationists will attempt to resume responsibility for their need to eat, they will be led back fairly directly to all their previous concerns for the welfare of nature.
WENDELL BERRY

Attempt Conservationist Eat Need Responsibility Resume
And to take good care of it, we have to know it. And to know it and to be willing to take care of it, we have to love it.
WENDELL BERRY

Care Good Know Love Take Willing
To cherish what remains of the Earth and to foster its renewal is our only legitimate hope of survival.
WENDELL BERRY

Cherish Earth Foster Hope Legitimate Our Remain Renewal Survival
To be interested in food but not in food production is clearly absurd.
WENDELL BERRY

Absurd Clearly Food Interest Production
A longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do.
WENDELL BERRY

Do Justice Longer Memory Sense Sterner We
I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief…
WENDELL BERRY

Come Forethought Grief Into Live Peace Tax Thing Wild
It is a horrible fact that we can read in the daily paper, without interrupting our breakfast, numerical reckonings of death and destruction that ought to break our hearts or scare us out of our wits.
WENDELL BERRY

Breakfast Daily Fact Horrible Interrupting Paper Read
We have the world to live in on the condition that we will take good care of it.
WENDELL BERRY

Care Condition Good Live Take World
I prayed like a man walking in a forest at night, feeling his way with his hands, at each step fearing to fall into pure bottomlessness forever.
WENDELL BERRY

Feel Forst Hand Like Man Night Pray Walk Way
The primary motive for good care and good use of the land-community is always going to be affection, which is too often lacking.
WENDELL BERRY

Affection Always Care Community Go Good Lack Land Motive Often Primary Use
The care of the Earth is our most ancient and most worthy, and after all our most pleasing responsibility.
WENDELL BERRY

After All Ancient Case Earth Most Please Responsibility Worthy
For any sin, we all suffer. That is why our suffering is endless.
WENDELL BERRY

All Any Endless Sin Suffer

The primary motive for good care and good use of the land-community is always going to be affection, which is too often lacking.

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The primary motive for good care and good use of the land-community is always going to be affection, which is too often lacking.

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