The Berry Center

Established in 2011, The Berry Center is a nonprofit organization dedicated to small- and mid-scale farmers in Kentucky and around the country and seeks to confront the issues these farming families are facing. This good and vital work is a continuation of the agricultural advocacy work of John Berry, Sr. and his sons, Wendell Berry and John Berry, Jr. 

The Berry Center Farm & Forest Institute is an initiative of The Berry Center intended to provide curricula drawing on the legacy and learning of the Berry family, as well as the writers, farmers, researchers, and community members who inform that legacy. From this lineage, participants learn to use nature as the standard for land use and cultural practices and how to serve their rural communities through effective leadership.

The Berry Center’s work informs the curriculum in that it provides a model for parity-based, cooperative, agriculture of the middle. The Berry Center aims for participants of the farming program to develop an understanding that a sound, just, and mindful local economy requires that nature become the standard of work and production. They support curricula that will prepare participants to become farmers and advocates for land-conserving communities through an education in agrarian thought and practice that is holistic and place-based. 

The Berry Center Farm & Forest Institute instructional courses and faculty and staff offices are located in Henry County, Kentucky.

Want to get involved at The Berry Center? Here’s How: Join the Membership. Take a Class at the Farm & Forest Institute.Purchase Henry County Beef from Our Home Place MeatBuy your books from our favorite independent bookstore, The Bookstore at The Berry Center. Follow The Berry Center on Facebook and Instagram and look for events we host all through the year: Spring Agrarian Voices Lecture, Spring Open House and Kids’ Arts & Letters Day, Annual Wendell Berry Lecture, Spring & Fall Agrarian Voices Lectures, Agrarian Literary League (ALL) Fall Festival, Beef Bash (second Saturday in October), Kentucky Arts & Letters Day (second Saturday in November).