Srila Prabhupada's Awareness of the Importance of Agrarian Culture

Excerpt from an interview

Srila Prabhupada went for a morning walk in Talavan (New Vrindaban). When he stepped out of the woods into an open field, he stopped and looked at the devotees. Then, with a serious expression, he asked, "Why are these fields fallow, and why aren't there any men working these fields, and where are the oxen?" I was the only devotee farming at that time, and this impressed me. I didn't say anything, but it really touched me that Prabhupada was attentive to what was being done in the agricultural realm.

Srila Prabhupada was keenly aware that the importance of agrarian culture was not just about having our own food source when the economy fails. Even more so, it was for the sake of depending on nature's gifts as a matter of relationships. We must acknowledge and experience our utter dependence on Krishna in order to serve and love Him truly.

Srila Prabhupada envisioned New Vrindaban as a community where everything and everyone is living in harmony, assisting each other in serving Krishna. That kind of spirit promotes appreciation for everyone and everything and deep gratitude to the designer of this perfect arrangement.

I had been doing farm and conservation work all my life, and I had seen the plight of the American farmer from 1950 onwards. I saw the introduction of tractors and how they displaced the draft animals. High-powered tractors resulted in the overproduction of food, leading to the government paying farmers more money for not growing crops than the profit they'd make from their harvests. I witnessed farms going under and being bought up by the big and exploitative farming industry. I observed the whole syndrome.

What Srila Prabhupada asked weren’t just questions; you could see on his face a serious concern that this same fate might befall the devotees in New Vrindavan; he was aware of this whole tendency and syndrome. His terminology reflects the tractor as the killer of the bull. If you're not seeing yourself as dependent on the land and the oxen, then you're not going to have the proper appreciation and you're not going to demonstrate cow protection on the level of what he deemed as appropriate, the standard that the cows be jolly. Keep in mind that cows come in two genders. And they are not jolly unless they're contributing to society.

Seeing the things that Srila Prabhupada would pick up on gave me an even greater appreciation of the depth of his wisdom and the integrity of his understanding of all aspects of spiritual life, from the most practical to the deeply esoteric.