The Church and Farming

From the Wanderer:
In "The Church and Farming" (1953), Fr. (Dennis) Fahey quoted extensively from Sir Albert Howard's "An Agricultural Testament"...and this passage is particularly striking:"The invasion of economics into agricultural research naturally followed the quantitative methods. It was an imitation of the successful application of costings to the operations of the factory...Farming has come to be looked at as if it were a factory. Agriculture is regarded as a commercial enterprise; far too much emphasis has been laid on profit. But the purpose of agriculture is far different than that of a factory. It has to provide food in order that the race may flourish and persist. The best results are obtained if the food is fresh and the soil is fertile. Quality is more important than weight...The nation's food in the nature of things must always take the first place. The financial system, after all, is but a second matter. Economics, therefore, in failing to insist on these elementary truths, has been guilty of a grave error of judgment...."It was a grave mistake. Fr. Fahey quotes another pioneer in the organic farming movement, Oxford-educated Jorian Jenks (1899-1963), as saying that food production could endlessly increase through the use of industrial methods at the expense of "soil fertility, but also forests, mineral deposits, and oil-fields...The West has allowed this terrific food problem to creep upon it almost unaware, because its whole economic outlook for several generations has been based on the assumption that food would always be cheap and plentiful. Such an assumption could of course only be made by populations out of touch with the soils that feed them."