Certainly it is true that there are a number of ways in which farmers and environmentalists can find common cause and there are parallel paths that the two can take toward their common goals. However, while farming can be done in a way that makes it as gentle as possible on the land, it is never the same as natural growth.

He seems to be arguing (although this is not an argument that he makes in explicit terms but rather one that must be teased out in the process of comparing a number of his works) that farming is one of the activities that are available to humans that is most likely to produce grace. Farming, he suggests, can be seen as a form of resurrection, a chance for the land to be reborn in the process of saving humanity.

Berry's focus on resurrection is explicit in the ending lines...
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