Wendell Berry, the Kentucky-born poet, novelist, essayist, farmer and environmentalist whose writing made a sustained case for agrarian life against industrial agriculture and consumerism, died Monday at his home in Port Royal, Kentucky. He was 92.
His daughter, Mary Berry, confirmed his death. No cause of death was given.
Berry wrote more than 50 volumes of poetry, fiction and argument. His work explored elegiac visions of the life and death of agrarian America, while championing small family farms, the environment, local foods and interdependent communities.
He directed fierce criticism at chemicals, most technologies, agribusiness and distant government. His writing argued that food, farming and community could not be separated from the condition of the land.
Berry lived in keeping with those beliefs as a farmer in Kentucky. He plowed his fields behind Belgian draft horses and wrote poems, novels and essays mostly in pencil and without electric light.
He published more than 40 books, including the novels 'Nathan Coulter' and 'A Place on Earth'. His 1977 book 'The Unsettling of America' became a central statement of his critique of industrial agriculture and consumerism.
His 1989 essay 'The Pleasures of Eating' contained the declaration that 'Eating is an agricultural act'. Michael Pollan, author of 'The Omnivore's Dilemma', cited the line as changing his life. Alice Waters wrote an introduction to 'The Pleasures of Eating'.
Berry's work also included 'A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems 1979-1997' and 'Andy Catlett: Early Travels', published in 2006. Across poetry, fiction and essays, he returned to the demands of place, work and responsibility within a community.
He received a National Humanities Medal and was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2016, he received a lifetime achievement award from the National Book Critics Circle.
Berry's death ends a literary and practical life in which the defence of small-scale farming was inseparable from the way he worked and lived. His ideas helped shape conversations about local food systems, sustainable agriculture and the relationship between land stewardship and community.
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