Agrarianism
In the introduction to his 1969 book Agrarianism in American Literature, M. Thomas Inge defines agrarianism by the following basic tenets:
* Cultivation of the soil provides direct contact with nature; through the contact with nature the agrarian is blessed with a closer relationship to God. Farming has within it a positive spiritual good; the farmer acquires the virtues of “honor, manliness, self-reliance, courage, moral integrity, and hospitality” and follows the example of God when creating order out of chaos.
* The farmer “has a sense of identity, a sense of historical and religious tradition, a feeling of belonging to a concrete family, place, and region, which are psychologically and culturally beneficial.” The harmony of this life checks the encroachments of a fragmented, alienated modern society which has grown to inhuman scale.
* In contrast, farming offers total independence and self-sufficiency. It has a solid, stable position in the world order. But urban life, capitalism, and technology destroy our independence and dignity while fostering vice and weakness within us. The agricultural community can provide checks and balances against the imbalances of modern society by its fellowship of labor and cooperation with other agrarians, while obeying the rhythms of nature. The agrarian community is the model society for mankind.
Urban Agrarianism
The work we’re doing with Justice Gardens is an effort to take the principles of the agrarian way of life (among other things) and bring these principles and praxis into the city and the lives of the people who need a way and an example of how to create order out of chaos. But, it’s not just this. It’s not just a cry toward living out of some principle. It’s not just “urban homesteading” or turning your lawn into food. It is those things, but more. It’s more than just getting excited about living self-sufficiently. In fact, it seems to me to be the opposite of what we’re trying to accomplish. I get the idea of living sustainably, and I understand the draw of living self-sufficiently in the current climate of world change and peak oil and globalization and all the other things we might be tempted to feel threatened by. It’s easier to live with a sense of identity and place and belonging when you can identify yourself with a group of people that are “doing well” or when the place you live or your neighborhood has a historical tradition that makes you proud or makes you feel blessed to be a part of it. It’s easier for a farmer to feel a sense of place and contact with nature while standing in a field of sunflowers or dusting dirt off the turnips. And that’s just it. If we can somehow bring the farm and feelings and the “place” that the farm is, into the places where that harmony doesn’t exist….then we’re doing justice. We’re not just turning a fallow field into food, or pulling up the grass by it’s roots and planting potatoes, we’re bringing order into the chaos of a “fragmented, alienated modern society.” We’re not living self-suffiently but we’re giving away what we have, in this case, food, in exchange for the reward that comes when we love our neighbor and care for the least and the lost. Urban Agrarianism is both the practice of hospitality and the practice of giving away the ability for others to learn hospitality as they engage in the cultivation of soil. This is not self-sufficiency, it’s community. It’s the local economy extended into the lives and souls of the community by starting first with the food on their plate and where it comes from. Your yard. Your farm. From your healthy sense of place, with soil and greens, and sunlight…to theirs. It isn’t only agrarians cooperating with other agrarians, as Inge puts forth above, but it is the spirit of agrarianism pulling others in to the connection they could have with their food, the land, and the “rhythms of nature.” Food is more than eating.
