James Ming Chen, After Agrarian Virtue, 53 Indiana Law Review 1-34 (2020). Available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=3449558. The rest of this thread reports the abstract.

Fernando Amorsolo (1892-1972), Winnowing Rice (1946). Other paintings by Thomas Hart Benton and Jean-François Millet.

What constitutes agrarian virtue? Across human or even geological history, agrarian virtue subsists in the sustained production of food, fiber, and fuel without the exhaustion of finite resources or the undue disruption of evolutionary processes on which human survival depends.

Contemporary agricultural law, however, often emphasizes the expressive self-actualization of food preferences. This sublimation of economic independence from producers to consumers epitomizes agrarian vice.

Restoration of agrarian virtue demands not telos (τέλος) in its purposive sense, but rather acceptance of kyklos (κύκλος), or cyclicality in its full economic and ecological sense. @DBarnhizer @profabartow @Prof_KBowman @AgBioWorld @FoodLawProf @aglawllm @dfarber @tcjericho