Dan Philippon, from the University of Minnesota, has been working on environmental history and environmental ethics for more than fifteen years. His work is mostly dedicated to the relationship between environmental literature and its effect on the building of western contemporary environmental perception, especially in North America. Sustainability studies and current environmental issues are also part of his interests.
This session of December 11 was dedicated to contemporary food politics and their origins, mainly through literary texts which have had some importance in the building of food politics as we know them today . The aim of Dr. Philippon’s talk was to try and understand industrialism in the United States, leading to an analysis of agrarian politics. The sources used by Dr. Philippon for his research lead us to a general questioning regarding the treatment of soils and the practise of agriculture in North America.
Dr. Philippon’s analysis is social criticism regarding the use of natural resources. Indeed, his major reference is the work of Wendell Berry.
Wendell Berry (b.1934) is an American novelist, environmental activist and farmer, whose non violent actions and ideas of community, love for good food and local economics have inspired many environmentalists of his generation. Berry’s reflexion is based on a criticism of post-war agricultural organisation, as opposed to traditional agricultural goals which used to predominate until the early 20th century. In his most famous essays, Berry tries to define the agrarian concepts on which food politics are based and to define which are the priorities for our societies. His argument is Jeffersonian, regarding how we should deal with soils. Industrialisation and urban life don’t seem to bring as much thriving to human beings as it was said it would. According to Berry, industrial technology is wrong, “because it obscures and disrupts this necessary work of local adaptation or home making”. It is generally assumed that urbanisation and modernity are connected, which is why modernity as we know it is not acceptable. Berry highlights the fact that we could actually redefine the concept of modernity by connecting it to the respect of the environment.
As Dr. Philippon pointed out, it is very interesting for today’s generation to look at Berry’s texts. His essays were written in the 1970’s, in a farming crisis context in the US and while the environmentalist movement was emerging. At the time, the environment turned into a federal issue as people started to be more concerned about the quality of the air and water. The government passed the Clean Air Act (1970) , the Water Pollution Control Act (1972), the Safe Drinking Water Act (1974), in order to avoid further poisoning of the water and the air by pesticides and other toxic substances, which were leading to important health disorders for people. But today, the issues presented by Berry are actually still relevant and part of the questioning of our societies. How to treat soils? Where is the limit to the exploitation of natural resources? What benefits has industrialism brought to people? Are we satisfied with our quality of life, especially in urban areas? Berry’s main answer to these questions is the necessity for humans to return to the land. According to him, small farms are the key, because “bigness is totalitarian” and became culturally and socially destructive for humanity.
The use of energy appears to be the solution, in order to keep producing, but in a more responsible and sensitive way.
Sir Albert Howard, in The Soil and Health which he published in 1945 after his stay in India, theorised the practise of agriculture which cannot, according to him, be considered as an exact science. In that respect, there can’t be formulas or data found to subdue the irreducibility of the soil. Thus, organic culture derives from observation in the first place, way before technological advances come in. Berry completely acknowledges most of the points made by Howard, showing us another practise of agriculture is possible, considering other ideological perceptions.
However, as Dan Philippon pointed at, on a practical point of view, self sufficiency is not a reasonable alternative in the industrial world. Indeed, we could never manage to feed everyone on this planet by returning to small farms and self sufficiency only. Despite this, we also observe that industrialism has not succeeded yet in feeding the whole humanity, which is the reason why Philippon’s lecture was useful to draw the audience’s attention towards new questionings and some compromises which could be found.


Professor Dan Philippon at the Atelier