Ben Wiehl The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture #2

A line out of Wendell Berry's book sparked a stream of thoughts for me: "What might be the importance of these "marginal" lands, and of an agricultural technology and economy appropriate to them, in light of population growth." The "marginal" lands that I feel Berry is talking about here should not be put to the use that he suggests. Berry suggests that there is still a place for these "marginal" lands in the the agricultural realm. I feel instead that these lands should be allowed to resume a sort of natural state. In this way we will better the land around us. If more areas were allowed to resume an undisturbed state, untrammeled by man, then I feel like we would be leaving less of a negative impact on the Earth. At the rate we are going right now, we may not have an Earth that is as stable and predictable for the future generations to come. Is not every man and woman entitled to an life on the Earth and the chance to live it to the fullest? It would be unfortunate if we were to ruin what we have been so lucky to have in the first place. Also, I think that it would be beneficial to find a better way of producing the most we can out of the land we are using now, instead of clearing more and more land for crops, businesses, and residential areas. What we need now is better management of the resources that we have available to us, contrary to our usual policy of "take what you can get, because if you don't someone else will."