Farmtrad Life’s Lessons
27th October 2021
Andrew Breitbart’s axiom has been repeated so often in right-wing commentary that it has become something of a cliché: politics is downstream of culture, and culture is downstream of religion. But an essential feature is missing from this exercise in hydro-political cartography. Near the source of the river, just across from the church, there is a farm.
It may seem outlandish to claim that the way we farm and the way we pray are comparable in their influence on culture and therefore on politics. But it only seems that way from the vantage point of deracinated modernity. Indeed, agriculture has always preceded and underpinned culture. It takes no intellectual leap of faith to trace our obesity and other health crises back to what we grow, and how we grow it. Likewise, if we are what we eat, then our national (and civilizational) identity crisis should come as no surprise: we no longer know who we are because we no longer know what we are eating, or by what means it has arrived on our plates.