"A Kentucky farmer, he railed against agribusiness and championed small family farms and the environment, winning widespread acclaim."
"Wendell Berry, a Kentucky farmer who plowed his fields behind Belgian draft horses and wrote lyrical poems, novels and essays — mostly in pencil and without electric light — that explored his elegiac visions of the life and death of agrarian America, died on Monday at his home in Port Royal, Ky. He was 92.
His daughter, Mary Berry, confirmed the death.
Lanky and rawboned in middle age, with melancholy eyes, a jutting chin and a widow’s peak reminiscent of Lincoln’s, Mr. Berry wrote more than 50 volumes of poetry, fiction and argument that championed small family farms, the environment, local foods and interdependent communities, and railed against chemicals, most technologies, agribusiness and distant government."
Robert D. McFadden reports for the New York Times Augst 31, 2026.
