Another Mad Farmer acknowledges my debt to the life and thought of Wendell Berry, the most persistent and prescient critic of our food system and the culture that created it that we have. The title comes from Berry’s Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front, which enjoins us to

Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the alternatives. —
The Country of Marriage, 1973

Mortality confronts each one of us, and at my age that is a reality that demands recognition almost daily. But the end of the world as we know it looms before all of us as well, whether the specter be climate change or the collapse of our civilization. Few wish to acknowledge either, though fears of irreversible and catastrophic climate change pervade everyday life like the fear of nuclear holocaust haunted my life from childhood on. But techno-optimism infects all but the most cynical among us and too often cripples our ability to take the steps, intellectual and practical, we will have to take as the world changes under us.

This website records my evolving thoughts on our condition and links you to resources I find useful. Laugh! laughter is imprecindible, immeasurable.

— Michael Foley

Recent Reads

Tailspin: The People and Forces Behind America’s Fifty-Year Fall — and Those Fighting to Reverse It, by Steven Brill

Bullshit Jobs, by David Graeber

Podcasts

Interviews on urban farming and more at Urban Farm U.

Maria Gilardin explores the crises of our world on TUC Radio.

Bloggers of Note

John Michael Greer blogs on ecology, spirituality, and our future at Ecosophia.