Abstract

Paul Thompson’s agrarian pragmatism (Thompson 1990, 2010) is a compass of valuation that (i) pays homage to the people (including real farmers), animals, and places that contribute to the food value chain (Thompson 1983, 2017a), (ii) explores the mourning, uncertainty, and vulnerability that accompany loss of focal practices and the agricultural landscapes that give them expression (Thompson 2000, 2010), and (iii) inspires discovery of new “platforms” (2020a) or “social imaginaries” (Berry 2012) that beckon shifts in our ethics, praxis, culture, and politics that reach beyond technological innovation (Thompson 2007, 2015, 2020b) to steward how humans coexist in and shape the natural environment. My discussion of Thompson’s impact on “Food Ethics Futures” draws on the significance of Peirce’s Evolutionary Love (1893) as a formula for understanding moral growth and self-transformation. Thompson’s agrarian pragmatism (1999, 2010) reflects a vital human agapic formula that contains the blueprint for our growth amidst the dominance of industrial capitalism. Its “good elements of living” (Bailey 1915), marked by the development of caring and trusting relationships that involve gratitude, humility, solidarity, healing, growth, and moral responsiveness, invite “affection” (Berry 2012) that inspires lessons on how to strengthen human relationships with the natural world and land-community. The essay ends by raising some lingering anxieties about whether agrarian pragmatism is up to the task and the resources from without agrarian pragmatism that are necessary to advance agapic love.