Grounded Women is hosting a screening of “Look and See: A Portrait of Wendell Berry” in Bethesda, Maryland, on November 8 to benefit the American Farmland Trust. Berry is an award-winning writer, environmentalist, and farmer who promotes traditional farming and conservation.
“The care of the Earth is our most ancient and most worthy, and after all our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it and to foster its renewal is our only hope,” Berry wrote in The Art of the Commonplace: Agrarian Essays in 2003.
Berry was born in Kentucky in 1934 and earned an Master of Arts in English from the University of Kentucky at Lexington. In 1965, he bought a farm and settled into an agrarian life while also writing and teaching. He has witnessed and continues to write about the transition from sustainable farming and local economies to industrial agriculture and how it has damaged rural communities. In 2012, Berry won the National Humanities Medal, and he was admitted to the American Academy of Arts and Science in 2013.
“As I see, the farmer standing in his field, is not isolated as simply a component of a production machine. He stands where lots of lines cross—cultural lines,” Berry writes. “The traditional farmer, that is the farmer who was first independent, who first fed himself off his farm and then fed other people, who farmed with his family and who passed the land on down to people who knew it and had the best reasons to take care of it… that farmer stood at the convergence of traditional values… our values.”
Grounded Women is a blog that shares the stories of women farmers dedicated to sustainable agriculture. American Farmland Trust protects farmland, promotes sound farming practices, and fights to keep farmers on their land through advocacy and outreach.
The Look and See film “revolves around the divergent stories of several residents of Henry County, Kentucky, who each face difficult choices that will dramatically reshape their relationship with the land and their community.” It was produced by Robert Redford, Terrence Malick, and Nick Offerman. To purchase tickets by October 30, click here.
