09/03/2026
Jeff Krasno Wendell Berry has died at his home in Kentucky at age 92.
Few writers have had a greater influence on the way I think about land, food, community, home, and what a good life might actually look like.
Berry celebrated an agrarian America rooted in place, in the health of the soil, in knowing where your food came from and feeling interconnected with the patch of earth beneath your feet.
He spent much of his life warning us about what we would lose as agriculture became industrialized and our lives became increasingly disconnected from land and place.
He was just a wonderful, wonderful writer.
By some strange coincidence, I’ve been listening to The Unsettling of America. It was published in 1977, almost fifty years ago, but there are passages that could have been written this morning.
His critique of industrial agriculture, endless economic growth, consumerism and our severing from the natural world feels almost eerily current.
Berry asked an urgent question: What are people for?
What kind of culture do we create when we stop caring for the places, people, and living systems that sustain us?
He influenced generations of farmers, environmentalists, writers and thinkers. And he certainly influenced me.
Rest well, Wendell.
