J Agric Environ Ethics (2010) 23:297–299
DOI 10.1007/s10806-009-9197-y
BOOK REVIEW
Gary W. Fick: Food, Farming, and Faith
State University of New York Press, Albany, 2008, 223 + pp
Todd J. LeVasseur
Accepted: 1 July 2009 / Published online: 8 July 2009
Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009
Food, Farming, and Faith is Gary Fick’s culminating monograph that weaves
together a lifetime of personal narrative, religious sensibilities (he self-identifies as a
Christian environmentalist on p. 32), and years of research and training in
agronomy. Such a mixture creates a unique approach with which to look at
contemporary agricultural issues. Overall, this book represents a novel attempt at
digging into new, fertile ground.
The book consists of twelve stand-alone chapters, ranging from setting the stage
in ‘‘It is All about Food,’’ to ‘‘Ecology in the Bible,’’ to ‘‘The Culture of
Agriculture.’’ It also rightly discusses ‘‘Abuse, Poverty, and Women,’’ and
concludes with a paean to ‘‘Agricultural Sustainability.’’ The book includes three
appendices with two giving a quick overview of how Fick utilized five Biblical
sources for scripture quotations. The third appendix contains fifteen essentials for
sustainable agriculture that are based on Fick’s exegesis of the Hebrew Bible and
New Testament coupled with his own background in agronomy. Lastly, the book
contains a very informative and relevant bibliography containing helpful titles that
relate to food–religion (and especially Christian) synergies.
As a religionist and ethicist, I applaud Fick’s recognition that ‘‘Sustainability
requires change, and for people to change to more sustainable patterns of living,
they must be knowledgeable and motivated. Faith or worldview is a great
motivational force’’ (xvi). This appeal to religion and worldview as motivator,
coupled with an earnest and passionate desire for environmental justice and
sustainable agriculture, combine to form the central point of Fick’s book and its
unique contribution to agricultural issues: ‘‘there are numerous viewpoints and
plenty of information about food, farming, and faith. However, no one has
attempted to bring all three subjects together to identify essential knowledge in a
way that is accessible to the typical eater. But such a work is needed if eaters are to
T. J. LeVasseur (&)
Department of Religion, University of Florida, Anderson Hall, Gainesville, FL, USA
e-mail: toddlev@ufl.edu
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be empowered as change agents of the food system. At least two things are required
to empower them: They need knowledge, not just information, and they need
motivation’’ (4). This charge is followed up elsewhere in Fick’s introductory
chapter, where he writes, ‘‘What we eat and how we eat is full of meaning about
what we believe and what we value…a little reflection shows that the biological,
social, and spiritual associations of food are always present. All aspects of life are
interconnected with food’’ (12). In essence, Fick is betting that by making an appeal
to Biblical scripture and seeing what the Hebrew Bible and New Testament have to
say about agriculture, and specifically sustainable agriculture, then people of faith
will be motivated to support sustainable agriculture by their food purchasing
decisions.
The merits of this approach shine in Fick’s layman work with scripture. He finds
abundant evidence in scripture for diverse, contemporary agricultural issues such as
land and soil health, climate, creation, poverty, pests, treatment of women and
workers, animal husbandry, and the Sabbath rest and how these scriptural topics
apply to modern agricultural issues. His interpretation of scripture is both intriguing
and, as a non-specialist (both Fick and myself), seems to be well within the ballpark
of exegetical respectability and believability. One benefit of Fick’s work with
scripture is that he has done the legwork of culling relevant Biblical quotes that
pertain to agriculture so that others do not need to repeat this labor. He also provides
an interesting, insightful, and fresh ecological reading of Genesis 1 and deftly shows
how this relates to issues of sustainable agriculture; this is of course the much
maligned chapter that includes the biblical creation story and its codifying of
human–nature interactions.
Here is where a problem arises, however. Fick makes the assumption that humans
(and his audience seems to be Anglos in the Western Hemisphere) are motivated by
religious beliefs without offering any corroborating evidence or statistical figures to
support this claim. In other words, he has ‘‘mined’’ scripture to make the case for
sustainable agriculture without presenting strong enough support that Americans are
in fact motivated by scripture in their daily lives, let alone in their eating habits. In
part, Fick is hoping to open the dialogue between food, farming, and faith, and this
is to be loudly and roundly applauded, but one could easily argue that there are
passages of scripture that justify deleterious interactions with agricultural lands. It
could also be argued that the Fertile Crescent, where the Hebrew Bible and New
Testament were in large part edited and pieced together, is now a desert. Thus it can
be said that humans have been ill regarding for centuries the agricultural advice that
Fick has found in said biblical pages!
Despite this ‘‘leap of faith’’ about the efficacy of biblical scripture to positively
impact sustainable agriculture (which could be nuanced by citing relevant social
science and religious studies literature and survey results), Fick’s book is a valued
addition to numerous fields. He helps open the debate to include theocentric, Christocentric, and anthropocentric stewardship perspectives. He even takes on the sticky
subject of animal husbandry and its role in sustainable agriculture and the even
touchier subject of human population numbers. He also goes into vegetarianism, but
does make the mistake of equating vegetarianism with a soy-based diet when there
are those in the vegetarian community who are advocating a post-soy diet.
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Fick ends the book by positing that, ‘‘Religious and ethical issues are as much a
part of the tapestry of agricultural sustainability as are economics and farm labor
issues or the selection of crop varieties and tillage machinery’’ (127). This leads him
to offer a new metaphor for agricultural sustainability, a one-legged stool metaphor
that includes biological/ecological, social/economic, and religious/spiritual components. It is a rich conclusion that comes after a very personal, meditative plea for
changing the way we related to and value food and how it is grown. If the academic
discussion of religion–food–agriculture issues grows, then this book will rightly be
seen as one of its seeds.
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