Conserving Forest Communities

The third essay in Wendell Berry's Another Turn Of The Crank is titled "Conserving Forest Communities." In it, Berry brings many of the same ideas he has about agriculture to woodlands. Just as agriculture is best when done on a small, local scale with relationships between farmers and eaters, woodland use and management is done best on a community scale with local ownership and use of the products of the forest. These products may include lumber for building and for furniture, firewood, woodland herbs like ginseng, grape vines, etc. Rather than me trying to summarize, I'll let the author speak for himself.

Often the trees have been regarded merely as obstructions to row cropping, which, because of the steepness of the terrain, has necessarily caused severe soil losses from water erosion. If an accounting is ever done, we will be shocked to learn how much ecological capital this kind of farming required for an almost negligible economic return: thousands of years of soil building were squandered on a few crops of corn or tobacco.

There is no local interest connecting the woods workers to the woods. They do not regard the forest as a permanent resource but rather as a purchased "crop" that must be "harvested" as quickly and as cheaply as possible.

The economy of this kind of forestry is apt to be as deplorable as its ecology. More than likely only the prime log of each tree is taken - that is, the felled tree is cut in two below the first sizable branch, leaving behind many board feet in short logs (that would be readily usable, say, if there were small local woodworking shops) as well as many cords of firewood. The trees thus carelessly harvested will most likely leave the local community and the state as sawlogs or, at best, rough lumber. The only local benefit may well be the single check paid by the timber company to the landowner.

But we must be careful. In the past we have too often merely trusted that the corporate economy or the governement would dispose of natural resources in a way that would be best for the land and the people. I hope we will not do that again. That trust has too often been catastrophically misplaced. From now on we should disbelieve that any corporation ever comes to any rural place to do it good, to "create jobs," or to bring to the local people the benefits of the so-called free market. It will be a tragedy if the members of Kentucky's rural communities ever again allow themselves passively to be sold off as providers of cheap goods and cheap labor. To put the bounty and the health of our land, our only commonwealth, into the hands of people who do not live on it and share its fate will always be an error. For whatever determines the fortune of the land determines also the fortune of the people.

We can safely predict that for a long time there are going to be people in places of power who will want to solve our local problems by inviting in some great multinational corporation. They will want to put millions of dollars of public money into an "incentive package" to make it worthwhile for the corporation to pay low wages and for our labor and to pay low prices for, let us say, our timber. It is well understood that nothing so excites the glands of a free-market capitalist as the offer of a governement subsidy. [emphasis mine - J.G.]

That last quote is my favorite. The nearby city that my family's business is in gives away these kinds of tax incentives and abatements all the time. We've never sought anything of the kind and never will. It's disgusting when you think about the working people paying taxes to subsidize these "free-market capitalists."

Once again, Berry nails it. Local ownership, local control, local economy, strong community.