With no fanfare, and indeed with hardly much public notice, agrarianism is again on the rise. In small corners and pockets, in ways for the most part unobtrusive, people are reinvigorating their ties to the land, both in their practical modes of living and in the ways that they think about themselves, their communities, and the good life. Agrarianism, broadly conceived, reaches beyond food production and rural living to include a wide constellation of ideas, loyalties, sentiments, and hopes. It is a temperament and a moral orientation as well as a suite of economic practices, all arising out of the insistent truth that people everywhere are part of the land community, just as dependent as other life on the land's fertility and just as shaped by its mysteries and possibilities. Agrarian comes from the Latin word, agrarius—"pertaining to land"—and it is the land, as place, home, and living community, that anchors the agrarian scale of values.

For contemporary adherents, in cities, suburbs, and rural areas alike, agrarian traditions and ways have supplied a diverse set of cultural tools to use in fashioning more satisfying and durable modes of life. And today's agrarians are making extensive use of those tools, to strengthen families and local communities, to shape penetrating critiques of modern culture, and in varied ways and settings to mold their lives to their chosen natural homes.