Our bodies are inextricably connected to farming, to the earth, and to animals’ bodies. We treat our bodies and the earth, then, in similar ways.

In order to be whole, we must recognize the relatively small place of humanity within Creation. The idea of a search for “the human condition” has preoccupied thinkers for a long time, and the wilderness as a place of knowledge has become especially romanticized since the rise of industry. Modern civilization has forgotten the importance of wilderness, viewing it as scenery, and has forgotten the insignificance of humanity, as the magnitude of human technical achievement grows.

Berry has received a letter about a recent suicide, arguing that suicide “belongs in a book about agriculture.” Berry agrees: he argues that there is a connection between what we eat and what we do and how healthy or whole we are. A healthy body is a whole body, but it is not distinct from the bodies of other people, from those of plants and animals, or from the earth. In order to understand health and to heal each other, we must think of the whole picture to which we belong.

When we isolate the body from everything else, a competition is established between body and soul. The body should not be devalued in this way; this sort of division simply causes the “economy” of the body to work in opposition to that of the soul. When we have contempt for the body, it causes us to exploit other bodies, such as those of slaves, women, animals, and the earth itself. The world ceases to be a thriving economic community and instead exists in a state of detrimental competition.

If we divide body and soul, we condemn ourselves to loneliness and decline. In a society that welcomes exploitation, economic and agricultural policy causes soil to be eroded and land to be destroyed in pursuit of short-term economic gain. A lonely soul hopes for salvation, but this makes us feel that our lives are simply spiritual trials.

Body, soul, and world are a community; a farmer who does not understand health makes his farm unhealthy, which results in unhealthy food entering the community. Healing entails the reunification of all the parts of society, drawing them together. Autonomy is often suggested as a “cure” for mental health issues, but actually this insistence on self-reliance just makes the condition worse.

We teach our young people to be “healthy” by striving after impossible beauty ideals and then encouraging those who do not conform to “accept” themselves. But this just causes us to spend our lives dressing and “making up” to compensate for supposed issues that are the inventions of society.

Another division in society caused by division of body and soul is a gender division. If nurture is the domain of women only, we enter an arena in which “practical” work is thought of as male. As society becomes more urban, these divisions become more extreme as men take more part in urban society. Women do housework, and the industrial economy has changed to ensure that this is work that divides a woman from her husband, rather than simply the pair of them contributing equally but differently to a joint household economy. A good farmer, conversely, must be a nurturer, domestic and bound to the household; “progress” makes this work “inferior.”

When the household ceases to be unified, a marriage is no longer a marriage. Sexual love loses its symbolic or “ritualistic force,” becoming simply frivolous and for recreation. Love has become commercialized, and young people do not experience in marriage what they...