While thousands of years ago humans relied completely on hunting and gathering for food (and therefore did little to disturb the earth), the dawn of tools, industry and technology transformed the way humans obtain food. The birth of farming and agriculture added a social dimension to the way we draw food from the earth. Energy and nutrients from the earth flow from farms through factories and stores to our homes and tables. Daily we depend on the fruit of the earth and the work of human hands. The industrialization of agriculture has freed most Americans from having to work the land.
Farm work is very hard work, and our lives are more comfortable as a result. Yet our farming ancestors had an intimate relationship with the earth through their work. They depended upon the elements and seasons, plants and animals, and the cycles of life. In some ways our modern lives are easier, but has not this distancing from agriculture contributed to our alienation from creation?
—from the book Care for Creation: A Franciscan Spirituality of the Earth
by Keith Douglass Warner, OFM, Ilia Delio, OSF, and Pamela Wood
