Note: This is a sample summary written by a student who has given permission for it to be shared.
Occasionally I have inserted some comments, which are in blue and in brackets.
Strong points of this summary: It’s well organized, it covers Berry’s main points, and it does an excellent
job of illustrating how to gracefully incorporate quotations into one’s own sentences. It also has an
interesting closing paragraph of the writer’s response to Berry’s ideas.
Weak points of this summary: It depends entirely too much on quotation. Almost every sentence
introduces a quotation. There should be far fewer quotations, and much more paraphrasing and
summarizing. This is a major problem.
Agriculture Through the Eyes of Wendell Berry
Bringing it to the Table is a collection of essays written by Wendell Berry containing his thoughts
on farming and agriculture. The first section is titled “Farming” and it is his feelings and ideas about
where farming has gone and what can be done to fix it. [Could the previous two sentences be combined
into one, omitting the reduncancy?] In the first chapter Berry says “Looking at the country now, one
cannot escape the conclusion that there are no longer enough people on the land to farm it well and to
take proper care of it” (4). Berry wants a revival of family farms and for agribusiness to lose its
stranglehold on agriculture.
Berry, being a farmer himself, feels very strongly about preserving small family farms: “The idea
of the family farm… is conformable in every way to the idea of good farming –that is, farming that does
not destroy either farmland or farm people” (33). The author feels that farming shouldn’t be at the
expense of the environment: “A good farm does not put at risk the healthfulness of the land, the water,
and the air” (Berry 14). Berry wants “to preserve the natural health and integrity of the world’s
economic landscapes,” he wants “the world’s farmers, ranchers, and foresters to live in stable, locally
adapted, resource preserving communities,” and he wants “them to thrive” (67). As farms have gotten
larger, “[a]llegedly cheap fossil fuel, allegedly cheap transportation, and allegedly cheap corn and other
feed grains have pushed agriculture toward uniformity, obscuring regional differences and, with them,
the usefulness of locally adapted breeds…” (Berry 51). [The brackets around the “a” of “allegedly” show
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that the writer has changed that letter to lowercase in order to use it in the middle of his sentence. In
the original, it was a capital “A,” and the word began Berry’s sentence.] Berry champions locally adapted
livestock: “the goal of intelligent farmers, who desire the long-term success of farming, is to adapt their
work to their places” (50).
Berry identifies agribusiness as the source of agricultural-related woes: “Farming, according to
most of the most powerful people now concerned with it, is no longer a way of life, no longer husbandry
or even agriculture; it is an industry known as ‘agribusiness,’ which looks upon a farm as a ‘factory,’ and
upon farmers, plants, animals, and the land itself as interchangeable parts or ‘units of production’”
(Berry 19-20). Industrial agriculture isn’t just dehumanizing—“industrial agriculture reduces the humus
in the soil, which becomes more cohesive and less porous as a result”—which leads to a greater reliance
on heavy machinery, which continues to make the problem worse (Berry 64). Berry says that factory
animal farms “concentrate the excrement of the animals—which, when properly dispersed, is a valuable
source of fertility, but when concentrated is at best a waste, at worst a poison” (11). Factory farming of
animals makes “an economic virtue of heartlessness toward domestic animals, to which humans owe
instead a large debt of respect and gratitude” (Berry 11). Not only does industrial agriculture damage
the environment, it is “dependent on the petroleum industry” and that has its own set of problems
(Berry 21).
Berry wrote his essays in the 1970s and 80s [Not accurate—some were written later] when
agriculture was quite a bit different than it is today. Today agribusiness is even larger, and, to most
people, farming would be considered a hobby or a side project—like an herb garden or a little tomato
patch. Berry’s dream of a revival of family farming has not come true, but there is certainly a greater
awareness of the folly of agribusiness. Modern agriculture has done a lot of good for a lot of people but
there are still problems with regulation and competition in the industry. GMO crops in developing
countries have saved countless lives and in this country they have massively increased yields and
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decreased pesticide and chemical usage. So while Berry’s dreams of farming returning to the people
might never be realized, at least the alternative is getting better.
Work Cited
Berry, Wendell. Bringing it to the Table: On Farming and Food. Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2009. Kindle file.
[Since the above works cited entry is only one line, we don’t see the hanging indent formatting, which
looks like this paragraph, with the first line out to the left margin, so the author’s name sticks
out, and the other lines brought in. In a paper citing several sources, I would ask you to follow
MLA form by making a separate works cited page. However, since we are using just one source,
feel free to save paper by including your works cited on the same page as your summary.
Remember, you’ll find links for MLA format and requirements under “Useful Links” on our
course homepage.]