Listening to Wendell Berry, with his American southern accent and genuinely warm eyes, is like going home. But on the 16th of February, 2009, we couldn't have been further from my hometown of Longview, Texas as Berry discussed economy and commensality at Casa Artusi, the center for home cooking in Forlimpompoli, Italy, near Bologna. He read from an essay on the concept of economy, and then shared an excerpt from one of his own short stories. Set during the Great Depression in America, Berry told of a farm family's meal shared with strangers: biscuits, molasses, navy beans, buttermilk, and fresh pork sausage. For Berry, food begins and ends in the home.

After his lecture, I asked Berry how he might advise the Obama administration to address the failures of current agricultural systems. “It's difficult to advise a government,” he replied, and referenced the Fifty-Year Farm Bill Op Ed he co-authored with Wes Jackson, President of The Land Institute in Salina, Kansas. For Berry, solutions lie in a long-term vision and in the deep roots of the Land Institute's perennial wheat grass. I asked if he was disillusioned by the overwhelming challenges of hunger, food security and access, environmental degradation, and climate change that we face. With an assured and optimistic voice that revealed his lifetime of experience and knowledge, Berry said, “I'm always hopeful because there is always something to be done; despair is for lazy people.”

In the chapel adjacent to Casa Artusi, Berry found easy ground between spirituality and sustainable agriculture. And the space suited the experience: a wise man in a sacred room. But rather than using the chastising tone of a southern pastor, Berry favored a more Zen-like approach to agricultural reform. “Wait to be asked,” he advised. “Get the beam out of your eye before you get the splinter out of your neighbor's eye.”

— Marchelle Jordan