The World-Ending Fire: The Essential Wendell Berry

by Wendell Berry

Albert Schweitzer, who knew well the economic situation in the colonies of Africa, wrote about seventy years ago: ‘Whenever the timber trade is good, permanent famine reigns in the Ogowe region, because the villagers abandon their farms to fell as many trees as possible.’ We should notice especially that the goal of production was ‘as many … as possible.’ And Schweitzer made my point exactly: ‘These people could achieve true wealth if they could develop their agriculture and trade to meet their own needs.’ Instead they produced timber for export to ‘the world market,’ which made them dependent upon imported goods that they bought with money earned from their exports. They gave up their local means of subsistence, and imposed the false standard of a foreign demand (‘as many trees as possible’) upon their forests. They thus became helplessly dependent on an economy over which they had no control.