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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 May 2015
Agriculture in the United States today faces myriad challenges, including soil erosion, biodiversity loss, climate change, water shortages, dependence on harmful chemicals, and a breach in the intergenerational transmission of agricultural knowledge. The scope and scale of the agricultural problems facing our nation today are an indication that we need a new culture of the ager (“field” in Latin)—a fundamentally new way of understanding and enacting our relationship to the land and the production of food. Catholic colleges and universities can make a vital contribution to this renewal through new agrarian curricular and research programs grounded in Catholicism's sacramental epistemology, analogical metaphysics, interdisciplinary search for wisdom, and respect for the spiritual significance of agricultural and manual labor. In turn, the incorporation of agrarian practice, education, and research within Catholic institutions of higher education can contribute to the education of the whole person that is fundamental to Catholic pedagogy, the cultivation of the virtue of humility, and the enrichment of Catholic liturgical practice and Catholic culture.
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47 James S. Sullivan and Paul A. Zipfel, North Dakota Catholic Conference, “Giving Thanks through Action,” November 12, 1998, http://ndcatholic.org/archives/thanks/index.html.
48 Catholic Conference of Ohio, “Parched Land, Perilous Times: A Call for Prayer and Legislative Actions for Farming Families,” October 1, 1999, http://www.ohiocathconf.org/statements/parchedland.pdf.
49 Nebraska Catholic Conference, “A Joint Statement on Economic Hardships Affecting Rural Life,” http://necatholic.org/document/a-joint-statement-on-economic-hardships-affecting-rural-life/.
50 Diocese of New Ulm, “Bishops Speak Out on Farm Crisis,” January 25, 1999, http://www.dnu.org/news/012599news.html.
51 Indiana Catholic Conference, “Care for the Earth,” http://www.indianacc.org/bins/site/content/documents/Care%20for%20the%20Earth%20web.pdf?_resolutionfile=ftppath|documents/Care%20for%20the%20Earth%20web.pdf.
52 Catholic Conference of Illinois, “That Abundance May Flourish (Psalm 72:7): A Catholic Perspective on Rural Life in Illinois,” Spring 2001, http://www.archdiocese-chgo.org/pdf/rurallifestatementversion811.pdf.
53 “A Joint Statement on the Hardships of Rural Life.”
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74 Statement on faculty website, https://divinity.duke.edu/academics/faculty/norman-wirzba.
75 Frederick Kirschenmann, “A New Science for a New Agriculture” (paper prepared for the Mountain Sky Guest Ranch conference, “Evidence Based, Opinion Based and Real World Agriculture and Medicine,” October 10–15, 2004).
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97 Ibid., 156.
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99 A comparable Jewish model is Adamah, a teaching farm in Connecticut where Jewish youth who want to enter agricultural professions can learn distinctively Jewish agrarian practices. See http://www.hazon.org/adamah/adamah-fellowship/.
100 “Average U.S. Farmer's Age Rising, Younger People Needed in Agriculture,” Huffington Post, April 20, 2012, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/04/average-farmer-age-rising_n_1403542.html.
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105 Kirschenmann, Cultivating an Ecological Conscience, 22.
106 The Sustainable Agriculture Education Association identifies seven private liberal arts colleges that offer degrees in sustainable agriculture, none of which are Catholic. See http://sustainableaged.org/Projects/AcademicPrograms/tabid/86/Default.aspx.
107 Xavier University Undergraduate and Graduate Catalog, 2014–2015, http://catalog.xavier.edu/preview_program.php?catoid=9&poid=1688&returnto=332.
108 “Seeking Integration and Wisdom: The Xavier Way,” Xavier University website, http://www.xavier.edu/mission-identity/heritage-tradition/Our-Jesuit-Catholic-Identity.cfm.
109 “Berry Farming and Ecological Agarianism Program,” Department of Earth Studies, St. Catharine College, http://www.sccky.edu/academics/arts-sciences/earth-studies/sustainablefarming_ba.php.
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117 Bahnson, Fred, Soil and Sacrament (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2013)Google Scholar, 35. These ailments are not limited to but do include sexual temptation, and work on farms or gardens can provide youth with a constructive way to channel their generative instincts. “A friend who was in graduate school,” writes Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, for example, “confessed that he was overwhelmed by sexual temptation. When he described thoughts he had while reading in the library, it became clear that his real problem was boredom. Though he had been driven to study by the love of learning, the leisure afforded him for the purpose of scholarship was more than his young body could handle. He needed some work to do. We invited him to weed our garden for an hour every evening. He reported that the sexual temptations subsided and he actually enjoyed reading again.” Wilson-Hartgrove, The Wisdom of Stability: Rooting Faith in a Mobile Culture (Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2010)Google Scholar, 120.
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119 Baron, The Garden and Farm Books of Thomas Jefferson, 178.
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129 Ibid.
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