By Ahmed Jalali

America does not suffer from a shortage of political speeches, economic forecasts, technological innovations, or grand promises about the future. It has universities, think tanks, research institutions, powerful media organizations, and an enormous political establishment devoted to explaining what is wrong with the country and how to fix it.

Yet, beneath the noise of public debate, some fundamental questions remain remarkably neglected. What kind of economy should a society build? What responsibilities does a government have toward the land and the people who depend on it? Can economic growth be considered progress when it weakens communities, damages the environment, and makes ordinary citizens increasingly dependent on distant corporations? And what happens to a democracy when its citizens lose their connection to the places where they live?

These are not new questions. An American writer, farmer, poet, and social critic spent much of his life asking them, often with an intellectual courage that challenged the dominant assumptions of his time.

His name was Wendell Berry.

Following his death in September 2026, at the age of 92, there is an opportunity to revisit his extraordinary body of work. But remembering Berry should mean more than publishing tributes, recalling his literary achievements, or placing his books on the shelves of American libraries. The United States needs to read him again because many of the problems he identified decades ago have become even more pressing.

For the American public, and particularly for those who govern the country, Wendell Berry is not simply a voice from rural Kentucky. He is a critic of an entire model of civilization.

His central warning was that a society cannot continue to exploit the foundations of its own existence without eventually paying a heavy price.

Wendell Berry: The American Writer Who Challenged Industrial Civilization

Born in 1934 in Henry County, Kentucky, Wendell Berry developed a literary and intellectual identity deeply connected to the land, rural life, agriculture, and the continuity of local communities.

He was a novelist, poet, essayist, farmer, and environmental thinker. After studying and teaching, he returned to Kentucky, where he and his wife, Tanya, built a life connected to the land and the surrounding community.

That decision was not merely a personal lifestyle preference. It became an essential part of his intellectual argument.

Berry believed that people should understand the places in which they live, take responsibility for their consequences, and recognize that human prosperity cannot be separated from the health of the natural world.

His writings challenged the assumption that industrial expansion, technological sophistication, and financial growth automatically produce a better society.

He questioned an economic system that measures success through production and consumption while overlooking the destruction of soil, the weakening of families, the disappearance of small farms, and the decline of rural communities.

The National Endowment for the Humanities, which awarded him the Jefferson Lecture in 2012, described his work as a defense of local culture, family farming, and an economic and political order whose consequences remain visible and understandable to ordinary people.

Berry’s thinking was therefore much broader than environmental activism. It connected ecology with economics, agriculture with culture, and local responsibility with political life.

1. America Must Rethink Its Relationship With Agriculture

One of Berry’s most important books, The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture, published in 1977, remains essential to understanding his criticism of modern American society.

The book challenged the industrial transformation of agriculture and the growing separation between farming, local communities, and the people who consume food.

For Berry, agriculture was not simply another economic sector. It was a foundation of civilization.

A healthy agricultural system depends on healthy soil, responsible land management, farmers with practical knowledge, and communities capable of sustaining themselves. When these relationships are weakened, the consequences extend far beyond the countryside.

Industrial agriculture may increase production and generate substantial profits, but Berry insisted that productivity alone cannot determine whether an agricultural system is successful.

What happens to the soil? What happens to the farmers? Who controls the food supply? What happens to rural towns when family farms disappear? And who pays for the environmental damage that does not appear on a company’s balance sheet?

These questions remain relevant to American agricultural policy.

The United States is a major agricultural producer, but its agricultural success should not prevent an honest examination of the environmental and social costs associated with industrial farming.

Soil degradation, water pollution, dependence on industrial inputs, and the concentration of economic power deserve serious public attention.

Berry’s argument was not that modern technology should be rejected or that all large-scale agriculture is inherently destructive. His deeper concern was the absence of responsibility when production becomes detached from the ecological and human conditions that make it possible.

American policymakers should therefore revisit his work when discussing agricultural subsidies, food security, rural development, conservation, and the future of family farms.

The question is not simply how much food America can produce. It is whether the country can produce food without undermining the natural and social foundations of its agricultural wealth.

2. Economic Growth Is Not the Same as Human Progress

One of the most important contributions of Wendell Berry was his refusal to accept economic growth as an unquestionable measure of national success.

Modern economies often celebrate increasing production, expanding markets, rising consumption, and technological efficiency. These indicators can provide useful information, but they cannot tell the whole story.

A country may become wealthier in financial terms while many of its communities become poorer in social and cultural terms.

A small town can lose its independent businesses, local employment, agricultural base, and younger population while national economic statistics continue to show growth.

A family may have access to more consumer products while becoming less economically secure, more indebted, and increasingly dependent on distant institutions.

Berry wanted Americans to examine these contradictions.

He advocated local economies, economic democracy, responsible ownership, and a preference for sufficiency over endless accumulation. His argument was not a call to eliminate markets or return to an imagined past. It was a demand to reconsider the scale, purpose, and social consequences of economic activity.

In his view, an economy should serve human life rather than require human life to serve the economy.

This distinction has important implications for contemporary American policy.

The concentration of economic power, the vulnerability of small businesses, the decline of local manufacturing, and the growing distance between corporate decision-makers and the communities affected by their decisions are not merely economic issues. They are questions about power and accountability.

If a corporation makes decisions that reshape an entire community, should its obligations end with the interests of its shareholders?

If a business benefits from local resources, what responsibilities does it have toward the people and environment that sustain its operations?

Berry’s writings do not offer a ready-made legislative programme for every modern economic problem. They offer something more fundamental: a moral framework for evaluating economic decisions.

That framework deserves a place in American public debate.

3. Democracy Begins Where People Live

Wendell Berry’s ideas also challenge the way Americans understand democracy.

Political debate in the United States frequently revolves around Washington, presidential elections, Congress, federal agencies, and the competing strategies of political parties.

These institutions matter enormously. But Berry’s work suggests that democracy cannot remain healthy if citizens become detached from the local institutions and relationships that give political participation practical meaning.

A functioning community is not simply a collection of people living within the same geographical boundaries.

It is a network of responsibilities, relationships, shared knowledge, and mutual obligations.

People who know their neighbours, understand local conditions, participate in community decisions, and take responsibility for shared resources possess a form of civic experience that cannot be manufactured through political advertising or social media campaigns.

This does not mean that local communities are automatically democratic or free from prejudice, exclusion, or abuse of power. Local institutions also require transparency, accountability, and the protection of individual rights.

But Berry’s emphasis on local responsibility raises an important question for the American political establishment: can democracy flourish when so many decisions affecting ordinary citizens are made by distant institutions with limited knowledge of local realities?

Federal policy is necessary in many areas, from environmental protection to public health and economic regulation. However, national institutions should not treat local communities as passive recipients of decisions made elsewhere.

A stronger democracy requires meaningful participation at every level.

Berry’s defence of local culture and community life offers a useful starting point for reconsidering how political power should be distributed and exercised.

4. Environmental Protection Must Begin With Responsibility

For Wendell Berry, environmental protection was not a fashionable political position or a separate issue reserved for specialists.

It was a question of how human beings live.

His ecological philosophy was based on the recognition that land, water, forests, animals, and human communities are interconnected.

A society cannot claim to respect nature while treating the natural world as an unlimited warehouse of raw materials.

Nor can environmental responsibility be reduced to occasional conservation campaigns while the economic system continues to reward wasteful production and irresponsible resource extraction.

Berry’s criticism of industrial agriculture, destructive mining, and the exploitation of natural resources reflected a consistent principle: people should care for the places that sustain them.

This principle is particularly relevant to the United States, where environmental questions are frequently entangled with political divisions, economic interests, energy policy, and regional identities.

Environmental protection should not be treated as the exclusive property of one political party.

Clean water, healthy soil, safe communities, and sustainable resource management are public interests. They concern farmers and city residents, conservatives and liberals, workers and business owners.

Berry’s approach encourages Americans to move beyond the political argument over whether environmental protection is economically convenient.

The more important question is whether economic activity is compatible with the long-term health of the land and the people who depend on it.

A country that damages its natural foundations in pursuit of short-term financial returns is not necessarily becoming richer. It may simply be transferring the costs of present prosperity to future generations.

5. Technology Should Serve Human Beings, Not Replace Human Judgment

Wendell Berry was also an unusually perceptive critic of technological enthusiasm.

His famous essay, Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer, published in 1987, was not a simple rejection of technological innovation.

Rather, it questioned the assumption that every new technology represents progress simply because it is new, faster, or more efficient.

Berry wanted technology to be judged according to its consequences.

Does it improve the quality of human life? Does it strengthen or weaken family and community relationships? Does it solve a genuine problem? Does it create new forms of dependence? And what valuable human activities might disappear when a machine takes their place?

These questions have acquired new significance in the age of artificial intelligence, automation, digital platforms, and increasingly powerful technological corporations.

America is investing heavily in technologies that promise to transform employment, education, communication, healthcare, industry, and national security.

The potential benefits are substantial. Yet technological development also raises questions about privacy, concentration of power, employment, misinformation, social isolation, and the relationship between human judgment and automated systems.

Berry’s position offers a useful standard: technology should be evaluated not only by what it can do, but also by what it does to the people who use it.

An innovation that increases efficiency while weakening human relationships or concentrating power may require more careful examination than its commercial success suggests.

His approach does not require Americans to abandon digital technology. It asks them to resist technological determinism: the belief that society must accept every technological transformation simply because it has become possible.

Progress should be measured by human and ecological well-being, not by technological novelty alone.

6. Why the American Government Should Read Wendell Berry

The American government does not need to adopt every element of Berry’s philosophy. Nor should his essays be mistaken for a complete policy blueprint.

His work is valuable precisely because it challenges policymakers to examine the assumptions behind their decisions.

Government has an essential role in protecting public interests, regulating economic activity, supporting communities, and ensuring that the costs of industrial development are not simply transferred to citizens and future generations.

Berry was critical of excessive centralization and industrial power, but he was not simply opposed to government intervention. His own reflections acknowledged that public policy could support small farmers and preserve the economic foundations of rural communities.

The National Endowment for the Humanities’ account of his thinking makes clear that he recognized the potential value of government programmes when they addressed genuine social and economic needs.

This distinction matters.

The lesson for Washington is not that federal government should withdraw from public life. It is that government should become more attentive to the real consequences of its policies.

Agricultural policy should consider soil health and the survival of farming communities.

Economic policy should examine the consequences of excessive corporate concentration.

Infrastructure policy should take local environmental conditions seriously.

Technology policy should consider human dignity, privacy, and the distribution of economic power.

Environmental regulation should protect the long-term interests of citizens rather than focus exclusively on immediate commercial calculations.

In each of these areas, Berry offers a perspective that challenges the narrow separation of economic, environmental, and social policy.

His work suggests that these questions are interconnected and that government cannot address them effectively when it treats them as isolated administrative problems.

7. The American Public Should Reread Berry, Not Just Admire Him

There is another reason to bring Wendell Berry back into public discussion.

His writing challenges readers to examine their own behaviour, not merely to criticize politicians, corporations, or distant institutions.

It is easy to condemn industrial pollution while continuing to ignore waste in everyday life.

It is easy to celebrate local communities while neglecting neighbours.

It is easy to demand political accountability while refusing to take responsibility for the places and relationships closest to us.

Berry’s work is uncomfortable because it does not allow readers to place every problem outside themselves.

In The Unsettling of America, he explored how exploitation can become embedded in the habits and assumptions of an entire society. His criticism was not limited to a clearly identifiable group of villains. It also concerned the participation of ordinary people in systems whose consequences they might prefer not to examine.

This is one of his most enduring insights.

A society cannot transform itself simply by replacing one political leadership with another if its underlying economic and cultural assumptions remain unchanged.

Americans need to consider what they purchase, what they waste, how their communities function, where their food comes from, and how their economic choices affect other people.

This is not an argument for individual guilt as a substitute for structural reform.

Personal responsibility and public policy must work together. Citizens cannot solve every problem through individual choices, but governments cannot create a healthy society without citizens who understand their responsibilities.

Berry’s writing makes that relationship central to the discussion.

8. Berry’s Limitations Make His Work More Worth Discussing

Rereading Wendell Berry should not mean treating him as an unquestionable authority.

His agrarian vision emerged from a particular American landscape and a particular understanding of community, farming, religion, and local identity.

Some of his ideas can be difficult to translate directly into a highly urbanized, technologically complex, and globally interconnected society.

The modern United States cannot simply return to an economy based on small family farms. Cities are essential centres of culture, innovation, employment, and political life. Global trade supports millions of livelihoods, and technology has created opportunities that earlier generations could hardly imagine.

There are also legitimate questions about how localism can coexist with national standards, international cooperation, and the protection of people whose rights may be threatened by local power structures.

These are reasons to debate Berry, not reasons to dismiss him.

Indeed, the most productive way to read him is critically: to distinguish the principles that remain valuable from the specific historical conditions in which his arguments developed.

His insistence on ecological responsibility, human-scale economic decisions, community continuity, and limits on exploitation can inform modern policy without requiring a romantic return to the past.

The question is not whether Berry had every answer. It is whether contemporary America is asking the right questions.

Conclusion: A Country Cannot Build Its Future by Destroying Its Foundations

Wendell Berry’s death in 2026 closes a remarkable chapter in American literary and intellectual life. But the issues that occupied him remain unresolved.

The United States faces difficult choices about the future of agriculture, the concentration of corporate power, the health of rural communities, environmental protection, technological development, and the meaning of economic progress.

These challenges cannot be solved through nostalgia or by pretending that modern society can simply reverse the course of history.

They require a more honest understanding of the relationship between human beings, the economy, the environment, and political power.

That is why America should reread Wendell Berry.

Its citizens should read him because democracy needs communities that are more than consumer markets and electoral districts.

Its farmers should read him because food production depends on the health of the land.

Its business leaders should read him because profit without responsibility can destroy the conditions that make prosperity possible.

Its educators should read him because young people need to understand that knowledge carries obligations.

And its political leaders should read him because national power means little if the institutions exercising it fail to protect the foundations of public life.

Berry did not promise an easy solution. He offered something more demanding: a way of thinking that places responsibility before convenience, care before exploitation, and the long-term health of society before the immediate demands of profit.

Perhaps that is precisely what the United States needs to hear again.

A nation does not become great merely by producing more, consuming more, building faster, or exercising greater power abroad. It becomes stronger when its people can live securely, its communities can endure, its institutions remain accountable, and its natural foundations are protected.

Wendell Berry spent much of his life reminding Americans of this simple but difficult truth.

The question now is whether they are prepared to listen.