Blog Watch: Wendell Berry cited on technology in farming
22 October 2012
As Wendell Berry writes in Renewing Husbandry, “Mechanical farming makes it easy to think mechanically about the land and its creatures.” While we were at the Davis’ poultry farm, the brothers talked about the system that runs the chicken houses. The entire process is computerized, and it controls and monitors the feed, water, temperature, etc of the houses. If something goes wrong, an alert is sent to their phones so they know to go fix it. While this technology is great and allows them to raise a large number of chickens, it essentially detaches them from the farm. There is no real connection to the chickens. If they aren’t eating, a computer tells them. If the house is too hot, the computer saves the day. The computer does the basic observations that farmers used to be accountable for. However, the farmers estimated that their chicken operation probably feeds around 50,000 people a year. So, despite the lack of a connection between farmer and animal, it provides a service and provides food for a significant number of people.