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Agriculture
Nature Of The Beast
An Interview With John Robbins On The Great American Food Machine
We call some animals pets and other animals dinner because our culture says that some animals are part of our circle of compassion and others are not. To some extent, an animal that is destined for human consumption is exempt from the laws restricting cruelty to animals. In other words, you can do anything you want to an animal as long as you’re going to eat it. There are Filipino communities in the United States whose members carry on their cultural tradition of eating dogs, and many people who don’t think twice about the treatment of veal calves find it very objectionable to see a dog treated that way.
October 1998The Illustrated Diary Of Doris Koppleman
Only about half the number of people come to Ma’s funeral as to Dad’s. And Paul didn’t even bother to show up. I might have been madder if he did, anyways. At church Father Dietz didn’t have much to say about her. A woman’s life is not worth as much as a man’s, especially on a farm.
August 1998Alive In The Dying
I am amazed to think that my own life includes writing poems and repairing windmills. It is as if I have two lives that have mysteriously become one.
November 1997Living Well
I used to think “Don’t cry over spilled milk” was a warning not to cry from the beating you got for spilling your milk. My father’s violence at the dinner table was breathtaking. He would grab the offender by the arm and yank her out of her seat.
March 1996Feast And Famine
This girl is old enough to understand that she is dying. But she is not old enough to matter. This girl is probably already dead. A newspaper photograph of famine is like the light of stars extinguished many years ago.
March 1996The Economy Of Eden
“I have learned how to grow healthy crops,” wrote Sir Albert Howard in his 1940 book An Agricultural Testament, “without the slightest help from mycologists, entomologists, bacteriologists, agricultural chemists, statisticians, spraying machines, insecticides, germicides, and all the other expensive paraphernalia of the modern experiment station.”
January 1996Grave Love
Bill Pody was our love guru. He drank twelve Pepsis a day, smoked three packs of Marlboros, and occasionally ate — usually a cheeseburger. He was forty-one. He lived in a lime green trailer next to a short, concrete silo. From my farm we could see the silo presiding over Pody’s hill.
September 1995Environmentalism And The Mystique Of Whiteness
An Interview With Carl Anthony
I agree that, no matter what the noise level, each person is entitled to hear his or her own inner voice. That’s an important first step to hearing the voices of others, as well as the cry of the earth. But the ability to respond intelligently, creatively, and compassionately to the claims of different human communities is undermined by the false sense of privilege that comes from thinking of oneself as “white.” Wanting to hear the voice of the earth, the notion that nature is crying out in pain, has a limited potential for reaching and touching many people who are living much more prosaic lifestyles than those who think about these matters only in an intellectual and philosophical way. People of color often view alarmist predictions about the collapse of the ecosystem as the latest stratagem by the elite to maintain political and economic control.
August 1995The Contrary Farmer
The truth is that farming at its worst is no more physically punishing than operating a restaurant, brokering commodities on the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade, or training for the Olympics.
April 1995Day Of Rest
This July Sunday is hotter than any I have ever felt in Wyoming. It has been dry for weeks. The sun hangs limply in the sky, but for all its limpness, it blazes. The clouds are thin and high. The temperature is over a hundred.
March 1995
