“The complexity of our present trouble suggests as never before that we need to change our present concept of education. … Its proper use is to enable citizens to live lives that are economically, politically, socially, and culturally responsible.”
—Wendell Berry, Thoughts In The Presence Of Fear
Farming Education From The Ground Up
Established in 2012, The Berry Center Farm and Forest Institute provides future farmers with an education in agrarian thought and practice that is holistic and place-based. Our curriculum applies Wendell Berry’s writing to learning – and is designed to serve students from generational farm families, rural communities, and urban agrarians around the nation.
Human-Scale Farming Education
When Wendell Berry published The Unsettling of America in 1977, he spurred a broad-ranging conversation about the industrial-designed crisis that has led to “staggering losses of both farmers and land.” The Berry Center Farming Institute was founded in 2012 in Henry County, Kentucky, because we must keep farmers farming. And we must have more farmers who have more farmers who can afford to farm well.
To meet this need, The Berry Center Farm and Forest Institute provides early career and experienced farmers approaches to agriculture and forestry that are economically viable and rooted in place. In Fall 2023, the Farm and Forest Institute will begin offering community field days and continuing education workshops and short courses at its 200-acre farm and forest. Courses cover:
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livestock on grass production
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low-impact forestry
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agrarian thought and leadership
These sessions draw on the legacy and learning of the Berry family, as well as the writers, farmers, researchers, and community members who inform that legacy. Classes feature The Berry Center’s programs: Our Home Place Meat, The Agrarian Library and Archive, and the Agrarian Culture Center. Together, this curriculum provides the skills for working with nature. Students learn to apply these skills in their home places.
“The Berry Center’s Farm & Forest institute provides such a unique learning experience. I love having an outside classroom to learn. For me, it is the most useful way to learn and retain information. Hands-on, visual, active learning in a natural setting – it just doesn’t get much better than that in my opinion! These small, intimate, and hands-on classes really help me learn about the farm skills that are all very useful in my everyday life on a farm.”
Support The Berry Center
Years Of History
Preserved in The Archive Of The Berry Center, informing agrarian thought and practice, helping to chart a way forward for sustainable farming and rural prosperity.
Farmers & Community Members
As participants in the Farm & Forest Institute‘s field days, workshops, and courses that provide an agricultural education combining nature and culture, land and people.
Agrarian Books
Distributed by the Agrarian Literary League, a nationally recognized adult rural reading program from the Agrarian Culture Center and Bookstore at The Berry Center
Acres conserved
By Our Home Place Meat farmers, raising and processing the best livestock locally and humanely in a program based on the Burley tobacco cooperative model.
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