WENDELL BERRY PLANTED A FOREST

On August 31st, 2026, Wendell Berry passed away.

Like many people who have never met their heroes but somehow feel indebted to them, I spent part of the day pulling books from shelves, rereading passages I’d highlighted or earmarked through the years, and wondering how it’s possible to miss someone you’ve never actually shared a room with.

I’ve also spent a fair amount of time reflecting on just how often I’ve brought Wendell Berry into conversation.

If you’ve worked with me, been friends with me, sat near me at a conference, or made the unfortunate mistake of asking me for a book recommendation, there’s a very good chance you’ve encountered a Wendell Berry quote. Some of you have likely received an unsolicited endorsement of The Unsettling of America. Others may have found yourselves trapped in a conversation that began with regenerative organic agriculture and somehow ended with me explaining why a Kentucky farmer-philosopher had fundamentally altered my understanding of the world.

To those people, I offer no apologies. Berry’s writing changed my life.

That statement feels dramatic until I remember how many moments in my life can be traced back to his ideas.

When I first discovered his work, I experienced something many readers recognize immediately. It wasn’t the feeling of learning something completely new. It was the feeling of finding language for something I already knew to be true.

Readers might describe these moments as finding an author who speaks for them. For me, it felt like finding an author who had been quietly taking notes from inside my conscience.

Berry gave shape to questions I was already wrestling with.

What do we owe the places that sustain us?
What makes a community healthy?
What is the purpose of work?
How should we measure prosperity?
What responsibilities come with belonging to a place?

Those questions ultimately shaped the direction of my career long before I knew they would.

In many ways, they led me to The Regenerative Organic Alliance.

And that’s why, as I reflect on Berry’s life, I find myself thinking not only about what his work meant to me personally, but also about how profoundly his ideas continue to influence the broader movement that so many of us are building today.

Because while Wendell Berry never founded a certification program, he spent decades articulating many of the values that regenerative organic agriculture is now putting into practice.

Before Regeneration Had a Name

One of the remarkable things about reading Berry today is realizing how relevant his work still feels.

Long before “regenerative agriculture” entered everyday conversation, Berry was writing about soil degradation, rural displacement, industrial farming, biodiversity loss, community resilience, and the consequences of treating living systems like machines. He wasn’t predicting the future. He was paying attention. And it turns out that paying attention is a deeply underrated skill. In a culture obsessed with innovation, Berry devoted much of his life to observation.

He observed what happened when farming became increasingly industrialized.
He observed what happened when communities became detached from the land that fed them.
He observed what happened when efficiency became a greater priority than stewardship.

What he saw led him to ask questions that remain just as relevant today as they were fifty years ago.

Soil Health Is a Relationship

One of Berry’s most consistent themes was that land is not a commodity.

It’s a relationship.

Modern agriculture often speaks of soil as an input. Berry spoke of it as a responsibility. He understood that healthy soil wasn’t simply a means to produce crops. Healthy soil was evidence of a healthy relationship between people and land.

That idea sits at the heart of regenerative organic agriculture.

When the ROA talks about cover cropping, rotational grazing, biodiversity, compost application, and ecological resilience, we’re talking about much more than practices. We’re talking about a long-term commitment to caring for the living systems that make all agriculture possible.

Berry understood something that science continues to confirm: soil is not just dirt. It is a living community. And when that community flourishes, so do the communities built upon it.

The Forgotten Human Element

One reason I’ve always appreciated Berry is that he refused to separate environmental health from human health. In many sustainability conversations, people become abstractions.

Land becomes acreage.
Food becomes production.
Farmers become statistics.

Berry consistently brought the conversation back to people.

Who grows the food?
Who cares for the land?
Who benefits?
Who bears the cost?

Those questions feel especially relevant to the work we do through Regenerative Organic Certification.

ROC™ is built on three interconnected pillars: soil health, animal welfare, and social fairness. That final pillar sometimes receives less attention than the others, but I suspect Berry would have appreciated it immensely. He understood that no agricultural system can truly be considered healthy if the people within that system are suffering. A thriving landscape and a thriving community are not competing goals.

They are the same goal.

Regeneration Versus Extraction

At its core, much of Berry’s work was a challenge to extractive thinking.
Not just extracting nutrients from soil.

Extracting value from workers.
Extracting wealth from communities.
Extracting resources from ecosystems.
Extracting without replenishing.
Extracting without gratitude.
Extracting without accountability.

The regenerative organic movement offers an alternative vision. Instead of asking how much can be taken, it asks what can be restored. Instead of measuring success solely by output, it asks whether the system itself is becoming healthier.

That distinction matters. It may even be the defining challenge of our time.

Berry’s writing repeatedly returned to the simple idea that we should leave things better than we found them. That principle sounds almost embarrassingly straightforward until you realize how revolutionary it can be when applied consistently.

Stewardship Is Not Ownership

If I had to identify the single Berry lesson that has stayed with me longest, it would be his understanding of stewardship. Again and again, he reminded readers that ownership is, at best, temporary.

We inherit places. We care for them. We leave them behind.

The land existed before us and, if we do our jobs well, will continue long after we’re gone. That perspective introduces a powerful form of humility. And humility is not always a quality that modern culture rewards. We’re generally encouraged to optimize, disrupt, dominate, scale, and monetize. Berry suggested something different.

Pay attention.
Care for what has been entrusted to you.
Leave it better than you found it.

As life philosophies go, that’s not a bad one.

The Radical Importance of Place

Berry also challenged something many of us take for granted: the assumption that bigger automatically means better.

He was skeptical of scale for scale’s sake.
He worried about what happens when relationships are replaced by transactions and when efficiency becomes the ultimate measure of value. Reading those critiques today can feel surprisingly contemporary. The regenerative organic movement often asks producers to slow down and observe. To understand local ecology. To adapt management to specific landscapes. To treat each farm as a unique place rather than a standardized unit of production.

This emphasis on place is deeply Berry-esque. It recognizes that wisdom often emerges from familiarity, commitment, and care. Or, to put it in terms Berry might appreciate: you tend to make better decisions when you actually know the names of your neighbors.

A Legacy That Continues to Grow

Wendell Berry’s lasting contribution wasn’t a set of prescriptions.
It wasn’t a marketing campaign.
It wasn’t a certification seal.
It wasn’t a movement centered around a personality.
It was something more durable.

He gave people a framework for understanding connections.

Connections between soil and society.
Between stewardship and responsibility.
Between agriculture and culture.
Between what we value and what we ultimately become.

His influence can be found throughout regenerative agriculture today, whether his name is mentioned or not.

It can be found in farmers rebuilding soil health.
In ranchers restoring grasslands.
In organizations working to strengthen rural communities.
In people asking harder questions about what a truly healthy food system should look like.

I see it in the work we do at the Regenerative Organic Alliance.
I see it in the movement that continues to grow around regenerative organic agriculture.
And I certainly see it in my own life.

So while I am saddened by his passing, gratitude remains the stronger feeling.

Grateful for the books that continue to challenge me.
Grateful for the questions that continue to guide me.
Grateful for a writer who helped me see the world more clearly.
And grateful that his ideas remain very much alive.

A good tree has fallen. Thankfully, he planted a forest.