Agrarianism

Agrarianism was a movement for the equal division of landed property and for the promotion of agricultural interests. This thought was endorsed by Jefferson who wanted to make the United States more independent by providing land that of which would provide the American people the ability to live without the needs to purchase foreign goods. During the Napoleonic Wars, the United States had to remain neutral. Britain and France imposed trade restrictions in an attempt to weaken the other country’s economy. This posed problems for the United States as it disrupted trade and made it difficult to remain neutral. In an attempt to avoid harassment from the British, Thomas Jefferson chose to sign the Embargo Act of 1807



Many of the American founding fathers were students of the classics, and recognized the agrarian virtues from experience and classical history. Of the virtues cultivated by farming to its practicioners, James Madison said:
 * Founders as Farmers**

The classes of citizens who provide at once their own food and their own raiment, may be viewed as the most truly independent and happy. They are more; they are the best basis of public liberty and the strongest bulwark of public safety. Thomas Jefferson acquiesced, in a 1785 letter to John Jay, noting,

Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens. They are the most vigorous, the most independent, the most virtuous, and they are tied to their country, and wedded to its liberty and interests, by the most lasting bonds.[|3] Jefferson wrote later in 1797, "Farmers...are the true representatives of the great American interests, and are alone to be relied on for expressing proper American sentiments." The writings of J. Hector St. John de Crévecoeur, in his letter "What is an American?" from //Letters from an American Farmer// (1783) makes the farming life the essence of Americanism:

We are all tillers of the earth... a people of cultivators... united by the silken bands of mild government, all respecting laws without dreading their power, because they are equitable. We are all animated with the spirit of an industry unfettered and unrestrained, because each person works for himself." [|4] His laudatory extol of the civilizing virtues of the labor of small farmers are linked to a larger vision of America's purpose—defined by peace and prosperity, and secured by the labors of husbandmen. In précis, agrarian virtues nurtured the character in citizens requisite for sustaining republican self-government. Samuel Francis notes:

There was, in short, what historian J.G.A. Pocock calls a "sociology of liberty:" liberty was not merely something that could flourish in a vacuum because everyone wanted it; it blossomed only when and if the citizens were socially independent—if they owned their own property, rule their own families, ran their own farms and businesses, bore their own arms in their own defense, took responsibility for their own failures and mistakes, and earned and enjoyed their own rewards, then and only then could men their own selves, as individuals or as people, as a republic. [|5]

http://www.internetpundit.com/agrarianism:_overview

Agrarianism expresses a number of political and cultural perspectives. The creed can be summed up in four parts. First, farming has a spiritual dimension that generates many virtues, among them self-reliance, moral integrity, and honor, because direct contact with nature leads to a meaningful relationship with God. Accordingly, like God, the cultivator creates order out of chaos. Second, farming is the only occupation offering total self-sufficiency and independence, primarily because it is the only occupation that creates genuine wealth. (This physiocratic assumption has loomed large in American history.) Third, the farmer, through his work, gains a sense of place and identity. The reason for this psychological wholeness is simple: the farmer does not live and work in the city, an artifice of mankind's hubris. He is an alien in the hostile, man-made environment that is the city. Since ancient Rome, the city has been the traditional home of the proletariat, the landless, property less rabble. Fourth, with its fellowship of cooperation and labor, the agricultural landscape features the model society. These characteristics and values of agrarianism have long been a constant in the nation's history. As a basis for reform, agrarianism—like many other ideals—contains both a forward-looking element, a brave new world, and a desire to return the country to an earlier condition of individual innocence and social purity. Generally, the "backward" agrarian denounced what he saw as the corrupting influence of the modern world, while the "forward" agrarian saw social justice in the integration of technology into American agriculture. In addition, agrarians oppose monopoly and privilege, and desire the liberation of the individual from dependencies of all kinds and their related corruptions. The agrarian ideal turns on the cultivation of virtue and abundance. Jefferson and countless other writers linked the two. Recent historical scholarship regarding republicanism in American history illustrates the connection. Land was abundant in Jefferson's America. It provided the means to a virtuous and independent life, the essence of agrarianism. The American environment and westward expansion turned classical republicanism into an expression of democracy. Old World classical republicanism was an ideology of leisure restricted to men of landed property. The frontier, however, created a New World version of republicanism that allowed a material stake in society for every man who transformed the wilderness into his private property, thereby becoming a middle-class citizen. It permitted every man the means for political and economic independence. The classical polis was now the family farmhouse. http://www.answers.com/topic/agrarianism

Agrarianism According to Wikipedia Agrarianism is “Agrarianism is a social and political philosophy which stresses a rural or semi-rural lifestyle, most especially agricultural pursuits such as farming or ranching. Proponents claim that it leads to a fuller, happier, cleaner, and more sustainable way of life for both individuals and society as a whole.” This is a concept that doesn’t really fit with the way the world is being run today. We are all about high production at low costs in order to make money, and we unfortunately don’t seem to care if we trash the planet in the process.

Also according to Wikipedia, another similar movement to that of Agrarianism was although not" identical with the back-to-the-land movement, but it can be helpful to think of it in those terms. Agrarianism concentrates on the fundamental goods of the earth, communities of more limited economic and political scale than in modern society, and on simple living--even when this shift involves questioning the "progressive" character of some recent social and economic developments. Thus agrarianism is not industrial farming, with its specialization on products and industrial scale. caseyysmith12

Images of Agrarianism







When money becomes the only important thing, and the simple life with ties to the land and earth are lost in a struggle for efficiency and profit...