“We have not settled America. We have colonized America. Now, we’ve got to figure out … how to actually live here. How are we going to move forward? Everybody needs to be an agrarian now.”
— Mary Berry
We live in a culture that pushes us to keep moving. Obsessed with upward mobility, we keep searching for something more. But this ‘problem of mobility’ robs us of the opportunity to belong to a place. To develop deep cultural ties with the land and each other. And Mary Berry contends that this disconnection and lack of community is the source of many of our problems here in the US.
Mary Berry is the Executive Director of The Berry Center, a nonprofit that advocates for farmers, land-conserving communities, and healthy regional economies. On this episode of Reversing Climate Change, Mary joins Ross to explain how her family’s history as part of the Burley Tobacco Growers Cooperative inspired her to build The Berry Center and describe how the Burley Tobacco program’s principles are at work in her team’s Our Home Place Meat initiative.
Mary offers insight around the value of belonging to a place we love, discussing what it means to be part of a community and why we need to initiate small solutions locally—rather than waiting for one big policy or program to save us. Listen in to understand Mary’s argument against our current economy and learn how The Berry Center’s work goes beyond agriculture to foster cultural change.

Resources
Nori
The Berry Center
The Berry Center on Facebook
Call (502) 845-9200
Agrarian Culture Center & Bookstore
Our Home Place Meat
Burley Tobacco Growers Cooperative Association
Wendell Berry Farming Program at Sterling College
Wes Jackson
Nick Offerman
Becoming Native to This Place by Wes Jackson
Gary Snyder
Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry
Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community by Robert D. Putnam
Wendell Berry’s Port William Novels
The World-Ending Fire by Wendell Berry
Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television by Jerry Mander
50-Year Farm Bill
Organic Valley Dairy Cooperative

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