The Spirit of the Soil: Agriculture and Environmental EthicsThe Spirit of the Soil examines environmental problems in industrial agriculture and challenges environmentalists to think more deeply about the ethical dimensions of agriculture's impact on the environment. Professor Thompson considers environmental problems in industrial agriculture, such as the use of chemical pesticides and biotechnology, from an ethical perspective. He compares four 'world views' - productionism, stewardship, economics, and holism - which frame these issues and the potential response to them according to different philosophical priorities. All four are found to have their inadequacies. Thompson concludes his analysis with an open-ended and necessarily incomplete formulation of sustainability as the key goal for recapturing the spirit of the soil. He provides discussion of works by Baird Callicott, Wendell Berry, Wes Jackson, and Alan Savory, and reviews the potential of conventional environmental ethics and resource economics. |
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agrarian agri agricultural biotechnology agricultural production Agricultural Research agricultural science agricultural stewardship Agriculture and Human allocative efficiency alternative analysis animal applied argue argument assumption Berry Berry's Callicott chapter chemical choices concept consequences costs criteria critique crops culture debate ecological economic theory economists ecosystem emic environment environmental critics environmental ethicists environmental ethics environmental impact environmental philosophy environmental quality environmentalists etic evaluation Family Farm farmers fertility genetically goals Green Revolution hard systems herbicide holism Human Values ice minus implied increase industrial agriculture input insects interest intrinsic Jackson land land grant universities Leopold moral nature nomic norms pesticide pests philosophical plant political pollution positive economics practices predict preservation problem productionism productionist question reductionism risk ronmental rural Sand County Almanac Savory scientific sense Silent Spring social society soil species strategy sustainable agriculture systems model systems theory themes thermostat tion traditional University Press unwanted utilitarian virtue Wendell Berry