Wendell Berry is an American author, columnist, and farmer who has written extensively about agriculture, community, and culture for over fifty years.

In his 1977 essay, The Unsettling of America, he writes about the difference between those who “nurture” the natural environment and those who “exploit” it.

Here is a summary of how he breaks down these categories:

the exploiter (e.g. strip miner)

ultimate goal = money
is primarily concerned with:

• profit
• efficiency
• what is best for the organization
• what is the maximum yield that can be extracted

the nurturer (e.g. farmer)

ultimate goal = health
is primarily concerned with:

• care
• doing things well
• what is best for the people involved
• what is the natural capacity that can be borne

I think these categories translate to almost any area of work, but they seem especially poignant in the realm of the modern “attention economy.”

We have all seen how our attention can be mined for maximal profit while offering little in return, be it via content farms or excessive click-baiting.

At the same time, there are plenty of examples of home-grown content channels through which you can feel the care that was put in to each piece to maximize the value to the audience rather than simply to the creator.

Especially as small-businesses who generally have direct connections to our customers, when we operate our content along the lines of the nurturer rather than the exploiter, we are both developing content which is valuable in itself as well as a healthy and sustainable customer relationship.

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P.S. It’s worth noting that Wendell Berry would not appreciate me appropriating his principles to advise on digital content of any kind. He opposes the methods of modern energy companies (which he would categorize as exploiters) to the degree that he has famously refused to buy a computer or even to write his essays (via typewriter) by electric light.

You can read Berry’s full quote on nurturers and exploiters ​here​.