Failure Quote by Wendell Berry
““The family farm is failing because the pattern it belongs to is failing, and the principal reason for this failure is the universal adoption, by our people and our leaders alike, of industrial values, which are based on three assumptions: 1. That value equals price—that the value of a farm, for example, is whatever it would bring on sale, because both a place and its price are “assets.” There is no essential difference between farming and selling a farm. 2. That all relations are mechanical. That a farm, for example, can be used like a factory, because there is no essential difference between a farm and a factory. 3. That the sufficient and definitive human motive is competitiveness—that a community, for example, can be treated like a resource or a market, because there is no difference between a community and a resource or a market. The industrial mind is a mind without compunction; it simply accepts that people, ultimately, will be treated as things and that things, ultimately, will be treated as garbage. Such””
About This Quote
Source Book: The Unsettling of America, 1977
Industrial values reduce farms to commodities, eroding community and treating people as resources.
In simple terms: Treating farms as factories harms people and land.
Support sustainable, community‑focused agriculture.
Themes
Mood
Type
When to use this quote
- rural policy
- urban planning
- environmental activism
Key Concepts
Questions to Reflect On
- What values should guide modern farming?
- How can communities resist commodification?
Changing deep‑seated economic assumptions is difficult.