A mindless natalist

Liberty Hyde Bailey

Allan Carlson's "The New Agrarian Mind" is a book dealing with the New Agrarians (the author's term), a somewhat heterogeneous current in 20th century American thought, comprising thinkers and activists who for various reasons wanted to keep rural America and its farmers strong, while opposing urbanization. The book covers Liberty Hyde Bailey, Carle Zimmerman, Ralph Borsodi, Louis Bromfield, The Twelve Southerners, Herbert Agar, Luigi Ligutti and Wendell Berry. A concluding chapter promotes the Amish and similar sectarian groups as an alternative to the New Agrarian vision.

Carlson sees much that is positive in the New Agrarians, such as their attempts to create strong families and vibrant local communities, diffuse private property and fight urbanization. The author (who is a very conservative Christian, but with unclear denominational affiliation) warmly welcomes the New Agrarian emphasis on fertility, i.e. *human* fertility. At one point, he approvingly quotes Catholic priest Ligutti's polemic against population control. Apparently, there is enough potential farm land on this planet for everyone. The author waxes lyrical over "hillbillies" in the Ozarks who have ten children per family, etc. Presumably, 22 billion subsistence farmers would be no problem, then? Frankly, Mr. Carlson is a crackpot natalist! He also mentions, without negative comments, the tendency among many New Agrarians to support the South in the Civil War, a supposedly "agrarian" civilization (with gigantic monocrop plantations dependent on the world market - yeah, that's agrarian civilization for you, right there). More bizarrely, Carlson is fascinated by the erotic tendencies in the novels of Brumfield and Berry. Interestingly, the enchantress in Brumfield's pro-South novel "Wild is the river" is an octoroon girl in a Voodoo House, i.e. an exotic Mulatto. Ah, the glories of the Old South! Yes, yes, I know that Creoles were pro-Confederate, but isn't it interesting that the lecherous Mr. Brumfield emphasized *this* fact? LOL.

Despite the above, Carlson is ultimately critical to the New Agrarians. As a general rule, they weren't anti-technological, but rather wanted to use technology as an aid in decentralization and subsistence farming. They supported social engineering, either from the government or from powerful, quasi-Jeffersonian elites within the local communities. During the post-war decades, the New Agrarians supported suburbanization, in the belief that suburbs would become a kind of agrarian "garden cities" with strong community life. With a few exceptions, New Agrarians were opposed to "revealed religion", i.e. traditional Christianity. This kind of opposition is something anathema to Carlson. His preferred option is the "Plain People", such as the Old Order Amish and other separatist Christian denominations. Yet, he admits that these groups generally also use technology and sometimes produce for a market. It also struck me that the deviant lifestyle of Anabaptists could be considered a form of "social engineering" by powerful local elites!

I can't say that "The New Agrarian Mind" thrilled me. The book feels like a library catalogue, with basic presentations of the various New Agrarian authors, and a lot of quotations from their works. Carlson's book feels quote-mined. But above all, there is the annoying, natalist, anti-feminist perspective. The point of going back to the land, apparently, isn't to save the world from an ecological crisis, but to multiply even more than we have hitherto. Somehow, I prefer the contradictions of the New Agrarian minds...