A different kind of childhood

By Brian Kaller, Restoring Mayberry

If you ever wanted to see what the world might look like after the Tribulation, you could do worse than visit the Burren land on the Atlantic coast of Ireland. ... the Burren has only rock, with thin soil in the cracks –a rippling moonscape of pale hills that stretches to the sea, with few trees to slow the screaming Atlantic winds. It’s lovely to visit, but living here would seem to us like being marooned on an alien planet, and raising children unthinkable.

Trump and Mother Nature Threaten to Sink Rural America. What Does It Mean for Democrats in 2020?

By Joel Stronberg, Civil Notion

Trump’s crowing about his having launched an unprecedented economic miracle rarely seen before belies the harms his economic and environmental policies are causing farmers, ranchers, and agro-businesses in America’s heartlands. 

The Future is Rural: The Unexpected Consequence of Energy Descent

By Jason Bradford, Resilience.org

Something new will arise, and in the evolution of what comes next, many may find what is often lacking in life today—the excitement of a profound challenge, meaning beyond the self, a deep sense of purpose, and commitment to place.

A Rebellious Hope

By Neal Gorenflo, Shareable

While this new rural economy is coming to life, its success is uncertain. It will likely be an uneven, difficult, and slow transition if there's a transition at all. It will take people of uncommon vision, commitment and patience to make it happen.

Thoughtstoppers and Thoughtstarters

By Chris Smaje, Small Farm Future

I don’t think I’m being too Spenglerian to express the fear that in present troubled times, when the modernist state-industry-warfare nexus is manifestly unraveling, something similar could easily take hold again and do the same. And that, I submit, is a thoughtstarter, not a thoughtstopper.

What Wendell Berry’s Brush Teaches Us About Capitalism, Community, and “Inevitability”

By Russell Arben Fox, In media res

The Art of Loading Brush: New Agrarian Writings, the latest collection of writings by Wendell Berry, isn't a perfect book, nor the perfect expression of his powerful vision of what constitutes a good life or a good community.

Learning from The Left Behind

By Russell Arben Fox, In media res

Robert Wuthnow's new book, The Left Behind: Decline and Rage in Rural America, is the best book I've read on the rural-urban divide in the United States in years. It may, in fact, be the best book I've ever read on the topic, and I've read a lot of them.

Confronting Authoritarian Populism: The Rural Dimension

By Ian Scoones, Saturnino M. Borras Jr., Lyda Fernanda Forero, Marc Edelman, Wendy Wolford, Ben White, Open Democracy

Authoritarian populism is on the rise. Whether in Brazil, Hungary, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, South Africa, Turkey, France, the US and many other countries. Regressive, nationalist, sometimes with religious inflections, it is a diverse, global phenomenon.

Further Up and Further In

By Brian Miller, South Roane Agrarian

Speaking for myself (not Cindy), my urge and motivation for moving to the farm 17 years back, and the desire to document it, had more to do with wishing to relearn what it was like to be a resident. Or, as Wes Jackson would phrase it, to be native to this place.

State of the Union: Green energy and rural

By Jim Kleinschmit, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy

Rural resistance has helped slow the development of renewable energy. It doesn't have to be that way. For the President's green-energy plans to succeed, he needs to reach out to the rural leaders who are ready to act on climate change. President Barack Obama made urgent calls for new steps to address climate change in his State of the Union address yesterday, “for the sake of our children and our future.” While the focus was on renewable energy, he missed an opportunity to talk about the essential ingredient for addressing climate change: the support of rural communities.