Back to the land
Encyclopedia
The back-to-the-land movement calls for occupants of real property to grow food from the land on a small-scale basis for themselves or for others, and to perhaps live on the land while doing so.
The concept was popularized in the United States at the beginning of the 20th century by activist Bolton Hall
, who set up vacant-lot farming in New York City and wrote many books on the subject. The practice, however, was strong in Europe even before that time.
It also referred to distributism
, a 1920s and 1930s attempt to find a third way between capitalism and socialism. It was later used to refer to a North American social phenomenon of the 1960s and 1970s. This latter back-to-the-land movement was a migration from cities to rural areas that took place in the United States, its greatest vigor being before the mid '70s.
has related in a published interview that there have been back-to-the-land population movements throughout the centuries, and throughout the world, largely due to the occurrence of severe urban problems and people's felt need to live a better life, often simply to survive.
The historian and philosopher of urbanism Jane Jacobs
remarked in interview with Stewart Brand
that with the Fall of Rome
city dwellers re-inhabited the rural areas of the region.
"Awareness of the past is an important element in the love of place," writes Yi-Fu Tuan
, in his 1974 book Topophilia. Tuan writes that an appreciation of nature springs from wealth, privilege, and the antithetical values of cities. He argues that literature about land (and, subsequently, about going back to the land) is largely sentimental; "little," he writes, "is known about farmer's [sic] attitudes towards nature..." Tuan finds historical instances of the desire of the civilized to escape civilization in the Hellenistic, Roman
, Augustan
, and Romantic
eras, and, from one of the earliest recorded myths, the Epic of Gilgamesh
.
(author of Flight from the City) is said to have influenced thousands of urban-living people to try a modern homesteading
life during the Great Depression
.
There was again a fair degree of interest in moving to rural land after World War II. In 1947, Betty MacDonald
published what became a popular book, The Egg and I, telling her story of marrying and then moving to a small farm
on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington state. This story was the basis of a successful comedy film starring Claudette Colbert
and Fred MacMurray
.
The Canadian writer Farley Mowat
says that many returned veterans after World War II
sought a meaningful life far from the ignobility of modern warfare, regarding his own experience as typical of the pattern. In Canada
, those who sought a life completely outside of the cities, suburbs, and towns frequently moved into semi-wilderness environs.
But what made the later phenomenon of the 1960s and 1970s especially significant was that the rural-relocation trend was sizable enough that it was identified in the American demographic statistics.
Roots of this movement can perhaps be traced to some of Bradford Angier
's books, such as At Home in the Woods (1951) and We Like it Wild (1963), or perhaps even more compellingly to the 1954 publication of Helen and Scott Nearing
's book, Living the Good Life. This book chronicles the Nearings' move to an older house in a rural
area of Vermont
and their self-sufficient
and simple lifestyle
. In their initial move, the Nearings were driven by the circumstances of the Great Depression and influenced by earlier writers, particularly Henry David Thoreau
. Their book was published six years after A Sand County Almanac
, by the ecologist and environmental activist Aldo Leopold
, was published, in 1948. Influences aside, the Nearings had planned and worked hard, developing their homestead and life according to a twelve-point plan they had drafted.
The narrative of Phil Cousineau's documentary film Ecological Design: Inventing the Future asserts that in the decades after World War II
, "The world was forced to confront the dark shadow of science and industry... There was a clarion call for a return to a life of human scale." By the late 1960s, many people had recognized that, living their city or suburban lives, they completely lacked any familiarity with such basics of life as food sources (for instance, what a potato plant looks like, or the act of milking a cow) — and they felt out of touch with nature, in general. While the back-to-the-land movement was not strictly part of the counterculture of the 1960s
, the two movements had some overlap in participation.
Many people were attracted to getting more in touch with the basics just mentioned, but the movement was also fueled by the negatives of modern life: rampant consumerism
, the failings of government and society, including the Vietnam War
, and a perceived general urban deterioration, including a growing public concern about air and water pollution
. Events such as the Watergate scandal
and the 1973 energy crisis
contributed to these views. Some people rejected the struggle and boredom of "moving up the company ladder." Paralleling the desire for reconnection with nature was a desire to reconnect with physical work. Farmer and author Gene Logsdon expressed the aim aptly as: "the kind of independence that defines success in terms of how much food, clothing, shelter, and contentment I could produce for myself rather than how much I could buy."
There was also a segment within the movement who already had a familiarity with rural life and farming, who already had skills, and who wanted land of their own on which they could demonstrate that organic farming
could be made practical and economically successful.
Besides the Nearings and other authors writing later along similar lines, another influence from the world of American publishing was the unprecedented, vigorous, and intelligent Whole Earth Catalog
s. Stewart Brand
and a circle of friends and family began the effort in 1968, because Brand believed that there was a groundswell of biologists, designers, engineers, sociologists, organic farmers, and social experimenters who wished to transform civilization along lines that might be called "sustainable." Brand and cohorts created a catalog of "tools" - defined broadly to include useful books, design aids, maps, gardening implements, carpentry and masonry tools, metalworking equipment, and a great deal more.
Another important publication was The Mother Earth News, a periodical (originally on newsprint) that was founded a couple years after the Catalog. Ultimately gaining a large circulation, the magazine was focused on how-to articles, personal stories of successful and budding homesteaders, interviews with key thinkers, and the like. The magazine stated its philosophy was based on returning to people a greater measure of control of their own lives.
Many of the North American back-to-the-landers of the 1960s and 1970s made use of the Mother Earth News, the Whole Earth Catalogs and derivative publications. But as time went on, the movement itself drew more people into it, more or less independently of impetus from the publishing world.
The concept was popularized in the United States at the beginning of the 20th century by activist Bolton Hall
Bolton Hall (activist)
Bolton Hall was an American lawyer, author and activist who worked on behalf of the poor and was the originator of the back-to-the-land movement in the United States at the beginning of the 20th century.-Activism:...
, who set up vacant-lot farming in New York City and wrote many books on the subject. The practice, however, was strong in Europe even before that time.
It also referred to distributism
Distributism
Distributism is a third-way economic philosophy formulated by such Catholic thinkers as G. K...
, a 1920s and 1930s attempt to find a third way between capitalism and socialism. It was later used to refer to a North American social phenomenon of the 1960s and 1970s. This latter back-to-the-land movement was a migration from cities to rural areas that took place in the United States, its greatest vigor being before the mid '70s.
A recurring pattern
The American poet Gary SnyderGary Snyder
Gary Snyder is an American poet , as well as an essayist, lecturer, and environmental activist . Snyder is a winner of a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry...
has related in a published interview that there have been back-to-the-land population movements throughout the centuries, and throughout the world, largely due to the occurrence of severe urban problems and people's felt need to live a better life, often simply to survive.
The historian and philosopher of urbanism Jane Jacobs
Jane Jacobs
Jane Jacobs, was an American-Canadian writer and activist with primary interest in communities and urban planning and decay. She is best known for The Death and Life of Great American Cities , a powerful critique of the urban renewal policies of the 1950s in the United States...
remarked in interview with Stewart Brand
Stewart Brand
Stewart Brand is an American writer, best known as editor of the Whole Earth Catalog. He founded a number of organizations including The WELL, the Global Business Network, and the Long Now Foundation...
that with the Fall of Rome
Decline of the Roman Empire
The decline of the Roman Empire refers to the gradual societal collapse of the Western Roman Empire. Many theories of causality prevail, but most concern the disintegration of political, economic, military, and other social institutions, in tandem with foreign invasions and usurpers from within the...
city dwellers re-inhabited the rural areas of the region.
"Awareness of the past is an important element in the love of place," writes Yi-Fu Tuan
Yi-Fu Tuan
Yi-Fu Tuan is a Chinese-U.S. geographer.Tuan was born in 1930 in Tientsin, China. He was the son of a rich oligarch and was part of the top class in the Republic of China....
, in his 1974 book Topophilia. Tuan writes that an appreciation of nature springs from wealth, privilege, and the antithetical values of cities. He argues that literature about land (and, subsequently, about going back to the land) is largely sentimental; "little," he writes, "is known about farmer's [sic] attitudes towards nature..." Tuan finds historical instances of the desire of the civilized to escape civilization in the Hellenistic, Roman
Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....
, Augustan
Augustus
Augustus ;23 September 63 BC – 19 August AD 14) is considered the first emperor of the Roman Empire, which he ruled alone from 27 BC until his death in 14 AD.The dates of his rule are contemporary dates; Augustus lived under two calendars, the Roman Republican until 45 BC, and the Julian...
, and Romantic
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
eras, and, from one of the earliest recorded myths, the Epic of Gilgamesh
Epic of Gilgamesh
Epic of Gilgamesh is an epic poem from Mesopotamia and is among the earliest known works of literature. Scholars believe that it originated as a series of Sumerian legends and poems about the protagonist of the story, Gilgamesh king of Uruk, which were fashioned into a longer Akkadian epic much...
.
North America
Regarding North America, many individuals and households have moved from urban or suburban circumstances to rural ones at different times; for instance, the economic theorist and land-based American experimenter Ralph BorsodiRalph Borsodi
Ralph Borsodi was an agrarian theorist and practical experimenter interested in ways of living useful to the modern family desiring greater self-reliance...
(author of Flight from the City) is said to have influenced thousands of urban-living people to try a modern homesteading
Homesteading
Broadly defined, homesteading is a lifestyle of simple self-sufficiency.-Current practice:The term may apply to anyone who follows the back-to-the-land movement by adopting a sustainable, self-sufficient lifestyle. While land is no longer freely available in most areas of the world, homesteading...
life during the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
.
There was again a fair degree of interest in moving to rural land after World War II. In 1947, Betty MacDonald
Betty MacDonald
Betty MacDonald was an American author who specialized in humorous autobiographical tales, and is best known for her book The Egg and I. She also wrote the Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle series of children's books...
published what became a popular book, The Egg and I, telling her story of marrying and then moving to a small farm
Farm
A farm is an area of land, or, for aquaculture, lake, river or sea, including various structures, devoted primarily to the practice of producing and managing food , fibres and, increasingly, fuel. It is the basic production facility in food production. Farms may be owned and operated by a single...
on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington state. This story was the basis of a successful comedy film starring Claudette Colbert
Claudette Colbert
Claudette Colbert was a French-born American-based actress of stage and film.Born in Paris, France and raised in New York City, Colbert began her career in Broadway productions during the 1920s, progressing to film with the advent of talking pictures...
and Fred MacMurray
Fred MacMurray
Frederick Martin "Fred" MacMurray was an American actor who appeared in more than 100 movies and a successful television series during a career that spanned nearly a half-century, from 1930 to the 1970s....
.
The Canadian writer Farley Mowat
Farley Mowat
Farley McGill Mowat, , born May 12, 1921 is a conservationist and one of Canada's most widely-read authors.His works have been translated into 52 languages and he has sold more than 14 million books. He achieved fame with the publication of his books on the Canadian North, such as People of the...
says that many returned veterans after World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
sought a meaningful life far from the ignobility of modern warfare, regarding his own experience as typical of the pattern. In Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
, those who sought a life completely outside of the cities, suburbs, and towns frequently moved into semi-wilderness environs.
But what made the later phenomenon of the 1960s and 1970s especially significant was that the rural-relocation trend was sizable enough that it was identified in the American demographic statistics.
Roots of this movement can perhaps be traced to some of Bradford Angier
Bradford Angier
Bradford Angier was a wilderness survivalist and proponent of back to earth living. He authored more than 35 books on how to survive in the wild and how to live minimalisticly off the land....
's books, such as At Home in the Woods (1951) and We Like it Wild (1963), or perhaps even more compellingly to the 1954 publication of Helen and Scott Nearing
Helen and Scott Nearing
Helen Knothe Nearing and Scott Nearing were well-known American back-to-the-landers who wrote extensively about their experience living what they termed "the good life".- Philosophy :...
's book, Living the Good Life. This book chronicles the Nearings' move to an older house in a rural
Rural
Rural areas or the country or countryside are areas that are not urbanized, though when large areas are described, country towns and smaller cities will be included. They have a low population density, and typically much of the land is devoted to agriculture...
area of Vermont
Vermont
Vermont is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The state ranks 43rd in land area, , and 45th in total area. Its population according to the 2010 census, 630,337, is the second smallest in the country, larger only than Wyoming. It is the only New England...
and their self-sufficient
Self-sufficiency
Self-sufficiency refers to the state of not requiring any outside aid, support, or interaction, for survival; it is therefore a type of personal or collective autonomy...
and simple lifestyle
Simple living
Simple living encompasses a number of different voluntary practices to simplify one's lifestyle. These may include reducing one's possessions or increasing self-sufficiency, for example. Simple living may be characterized by individuals being satisfied with what they need rather than want...
. In their initial move, the Nearings were driven by the circumstances of the Great Depression and influenced by earlier writers, particularly Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau was an American author, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, and leading transcendentalist...
. Their book was published six years after A Sand County Almanac
A Sand County Almanac
A Sand County Almanac: And Sketches Here and There is a 1949 non-fiction book by American ecologist, forester, and environmentalist Aldo Leopold. Describing the land around the author's home in Sauk County, Wisconsin, the collection of essays advocate Leopold's idea of a "land ethic", or a...
, by the ecologist and environmental activist Aldo Leopold
Aldo Leopold
Aldo Leopold was an American author, scientist, ecologist, forester, and environmentalist. He was a professor at the University of Wisconsin and is best known for his book A Sand County Almanac , which has sold over two million copies...
, was published, in 1948. Influences aside, the Nearings had planned and worked hard, developing their homestead and life according to a twelve-point plan they had drafted.
The narrative of Phil Cousineau's documentary film Ecological Design: Inventing the Future asserts that in the decades after World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, "The world was forced to confront the dark shadow of science and industry... There was a clarion call for a return to a life of human scale." By the late 1960s, many people had recognized that, living their city or suburban lives, they completely lacked any familiarity with such basics of life as food sources (for instance, what a potato plant looks like, or the act of milking a cow) — and they felt out of touch with nature, in general. While the back-to-the-land movement was not strictly part of the counterculture of the 1960s
Counterculture of the 1960s
The counterculture of the 1960s refers to a cultural movement that mainly developed in the United States and spread throughout much of the western world between 1960 and 1973. The movement gained momentum during the U.S. government's extensive military intervention in Vietnam...
, the two movements had some overlap in participation.
Many people were attracted to getting more in touch with the basics just mentioned, but the movement was also fueled by the negatives of modern life: rampant consumerism
Consumerism
Consumerism is a social and economic order that is based on the systematic creation and fostering of a desire to purchase goods and services in ever greater amounts. The term is often associated with criticisms of consumption starting with Thorstein Veblen...
, the failings of government and society, including the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
, and a perceived general urban deterioration, including a growing public concern about air and water pollution
Pollution
Pollution is the introduction of contaminants into a natural environment that causes instability, disorder, harm or discomfort to the ecosystem i.e. physical systems or living organisms. Pollution can take the form of chemical substances or energy, such as noise, heat or light...
. Events such as the Watergate scandal
Watergate scandal
The Watergate scandal was a political scandal during the 1970s in the United States resulting from the break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C., and the Nixon administration's attempted cover-up of its involvement...
and the 1973 energy crisis
Energy crisis
An energy crisis is any great bottleneck in the supply of energy resources to an economy. In popular literature though, it often refers to one of the energy sources used at a certain time and place, particularly those that supply national electricity grids or serve as fuel for vehicles...
contributed to these views. Some people rejected the struggle and boredom of "moving up the company ladder." Paralleling the desire for reconnection with nature was a desire to reconnect with physical work. Farmer and author Gene Logsdon expressed the aim aptly as: "the kind of independence that defines success in terms of how much food, clothing, shelter, and contentment I could produce for myself rather than how much I could buy."
There was also a segment within the movement who already had a familiarity with rural life and farming, who already had skills, and who wanted land of their own on which they could demonstrate that organic farming
Organic farming
Organic farming is the form of agriculture that relies on techniques such as crop rotation, green manure, compost and biological pest control to maintain soil productivity and control pests on a farm...
could be made practical and economically successful.
Besides the Nearings and other authors writing later along similar lines, another influence from the world of American publishing was the unprecedented, vigorous, and intelligent Whole Earth Catalog
Whole Earth Catalog
The Whole Earth Catalog was an American counterculture catalog published by Stewart Brand between 1968 and 1972, and occasionally thereafter, until 1998...
s. Stewart Brand
Stewart Brand
Stewart Brand is an American writer, best known as editor of the Whole Earth Catalog. He founded a number of organizations including The WELL, the Global Business Network, and the Long Now Foundation...
and a circle of friends and family began the effort in 1968, because Brand believed that there was a groundswell of biologists, designers, engineers, sociologists, organic farmers, and social experimenters who wished to transform civilization along lines that might be called "sustainable." Brand and cohorts created a catalog of "tools" - defined broadly to include useful books, design aids, maps, gardening implements, carpentry and masonry tools, metalworking equipment, and a great deal more.
Another important publication was The Mother Earth News, a periodical (originally on newsprint) that was founded a couple years after the Catalog. Ultimately gaining a large circulation, the magazine was focused on how-to articles, personal stories of successful and budding homesteaders, interviews with key thinkers, and the like. The magazine stated its philosophy was based on returning to people a greater measure of control of their own lives.
Many of the North American back-to-the-landers of the 1960s and 1970s made use of the Mother Earth News, the Whole Earth Catalogs and derivative publications. But as time went on, the movement itself drew more people into it, more or less independently of impetus from the publishing world.