Remembering Wendell Berry's Warnings on Industrial Farming's Water Toll
The writer and farmer Wendell Berry, who died in August at age 92, spent decades arguing that industrial agriculture degrades soil, water, and ecosystems. His critiques of mechanized farming and its reliance on fossil fuels and chemical inputs proved prescient, as seen in the current condition of the U.S. Corn Belt. Berry's work, rooted in his Kentucky farm, called for a return to practices that work with nature rather than against it.
Berry's 125-acre Kentucky farm, Lanes Landing, sat near where the Kentucky and Ohio rivers meet. He worked the soil with draft horses and composed his writings by hand on yellow legal pads, embodying the traditional methods he championed. His thinking drew on Sir Albert Howard's 1940 work, which argued that farming without livestock and mixed crops violates natural principles.
Today's Corn Belt illustrates Berry's warnings. Corn and soybean monocultures have driven population loss across western Iowa, Illinois, Nebraska, and Kansas. Roughly 40 percent of corn production feeds ethanol demand, inflating land prices to $30,000 per acre in parts of Iowa. But electric vehicles are shrinking that market, threatening a land-value collapse.
Berry's warnings may resonate more strongly now as the Corn Belt faces converging pressures: water pollution linked to cancer rates, rural depopulation, and a potential farmland price collapse as ethanol demand fades. Farmers and rural communities could bear the brunt, while consumers may see shifting food costs. The story could prompt renewed scrutiny of industrial agriculture's long-term viability, though meaningful change would require significant economic and policy shifts.