The Unsettling of America (1977) by Wendell Berry

This book was meant to be a criticism of what I have called modern or orthodox agriculture. As I now realize, it is more a review than a criticism. Criticism requires a subject that is "finished. " When agriculture is "finished," no would-be critic will be available. I am therefore constrained to accept my demotion as a privilege.

Nevertheless, there is a difficulty in writing a book on so inherently topical a subject as agricultural policy, and this difficulty is time: events that were the immediate cause of the book may be "finished" before the writing is. No reader of this book can fail to observe that it deals at length with the assumptions and policies of former Secretary of Agriculture Earl L. Butz, though Mr. Butz and the administration he served are now out of office.