The Berry Center

“It all turns on affection,” invoked Wendell Berry in his 2012 Jefferson Lecture. The Berry Center is building equitable and ecological farming futures based on affection—for creatures, for people, place, and for the planet.

Wendell Berry’s The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture, published in 1977, awakened a national and global conversation on the dire state of agriculture. The Berry Center was launched in 2011 to continue this conversation and preserve the legacy of Wendell Berry’s work and writings and the exceptional agricultural contributions of his father John Berry, Sr., and his brother John Berry, Jr. We are putting these inspiring writings and histories into action through our Archive at the Berry Center, Agrarian Culture Center and Bookstore, Our Home Place Meat—A Local Beef Initiative, and The Farm and Forest Institute. The core of our work is to advocate for farmers, land conserving communities, and healthy regional economies. 

“What will it take for farmers to be able to afford to farm well?” and “How do we become a culture that supports good farming and land use?” These are just a few of the questions that The Berry Center is addressing. We believe that the answers—while firmly rooted in local work—are central to solving some of the world’s most pressing problems including the devastation of natural resources and biodiversity; rapid onset of climate change; economic and social inequities; and the collapse of healthy farming and rural communities.

We hope that you, too, will join us in this good and vital work.

Who We Are

The Berry Center advocates for farmers, land-conserving communities, and healthy regional economies.

Mission and Vision

Wendell Berry’s The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture, published in 1977, awakened a national and global conversation on the dire state of agriculture and the demise of rural communities. The Berry Center was launched in 2011 to continue this conversation and put Kentucky's renowned author Wendell Berry’s writings into action!

Unfortunately, the problems for farming families and rural communities have intensified since the publication of The Unsettling of America forty years ago. Today, seventy-five percent of family farms sold less than $50,000 in agricultural products. Only 16 percent of small family farms depend upon the farm for the majority of their household income.

This decline in farming is reflected in the decline of rural America. Boarded up storefronts of once vibrant town squares, waning funding for schools in rural areas, social degeneration, including high drug addiction rates—these are only a few of the consequences of policies that squeeze out small- to mid-size farms in favor of large, industrial operations. Another heartbreaking reality is that the highest rates of suicide in the U.S. are among farmers (even double the suicide rate of our country’s veterans).

As evidenced by the divisive mood in our country, the decline of agrarian communities in rural America impacts political discourse and outcomes for the entire nation. Revitalizing rural places is central to bridging the rural-urban divide and fostering democracy.

Challenging today’s ruinous industrial agriculture system, The Berry Center advances a holistic, “whole horse,” approach that takes nature as its measure, consults the genius of the place, and accepts no harm to the ecosphere. We advocate for an agriculture that results in healthy land, food, communities, and cultures.

Through our Home Place Meat, Agrarian Cultural Center and Bookstore, the Wendell Berry Farming Program, and Archive at The Berry Center, our work is:

—Providing a local farm and food model for rural communities across the nation by establishing a cooperative that enables Kentucky cattle farmers to sell their healthy, environmentally friendly meat locally.

—Reviving the arts and humanities—bringing the “culture” back to agriculture—in rural communities through reading programs, literary and art events, and books celebrating agrarian culture and community.

—Launching an educational institution that prepares a new generation of farmers in agrarian thought, practice, and rural leadership that is holistic and ecological.

—Preserving the legacy, writings, and scholarship of three of America’s remarkable agrarian leaders— John Berry Sr., John Berry Jr., and Wendell Berry, one of the country’s most esteemed writers.

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The Berry Center provides solutions to essential issues that are rarely in public discourse and certainly not reflected in agricultural policies. “Are we, or are not, going to take proper care of our land, our country?” and “What will it take for farmers to be able to afford to farm well?” These are just a few of the questions that The Berry Center is addressing...