Shanna Poison Berry

This post must begin with song lyrics. You will surely know the song. In the 60s it was sung by Melanie, and I believe the Counting Crows do the version of it that is popular today. It goes "Don't it always seem to go, you don't know what you've got till it's gone. They paved paradise and put up a parking lot." The line of this song most relavent to my topic is "Farmer, farmer, put away your DDT's, I don't care about spots on my apples, leave me the birds and the bees." Wendell Berry talks about this, in essence. No one wants to be farmers anymore because it is expensive, difficult, time consuming, and uncertain. The bigwigs from big cities are taking over the farming industry and making it alot easier... for themselves. They employ heavy machinery, crop dusters, scientists, and worst of all- Chemicals. You just don't tamper with chemicals around food, it's common sense. But they do it anyway, in the name of progress, production, and business. Berry put it best in The Unsettling of America: "And it is one of the miracles of science and hygiene that the germs that used to be in our food have been replaced by poisons." A greater truth was never spoken. DDT's, hormones, steroids, whatever the hell makes chickens lay more than one egg a day. All of this is severe tampering with something that simply does not need tampering with: nature. And yet, despite the words of Berry, and so many others, nothing will be done. Americans will continue to be "poisoned." From Rationality and Narrative, Socrates tells us why. "Do not be annoyed at my telling the truth; the fact is that no man in the world will come off safe who honestly opposes either you or any other multitude" (Redick & Underwood, 402). The little guy just can't win against corporate America. Or, in the words of Berry, "throwing a rock into a frozen river does not make a ripple."