Ironically, much if not most food we eat is dependent on fossil-fuel energy, largely through nitrogen fertiliser (natural-gas based), but also pesticides, mechanised agriculture, and the distribution network's transport, cold-chain, and retail elements.
That's not a defence of fossil fuels so much as noting that Berry's arguments here sits a little loosely with reality.
His lifestyle - activism included - is a fantasy of pastoral individualism which is only possible because science and technology keep the lights on for everyone around him.
He still doesn't use a computer, and his wife still uses a typewriter to transcribe his rustic hand-hewn longhand.
But after that the words are typed into a computer by another assistant.
Would a return to small-scale farms and communities be a good thing? Of course. But he's blaming "lazy city folks" when the real culprits are corporate raiders and would-be plantation owners.
I'm addressing his argument rather than his lifestyle.
More to the point, Berry's lifestyle is in large part an argument. I'd agree it's not scalable (which was a large part of what I'd critiqued him for earlier), but it does reflect an ethos, one whose principle goal is explicitly not "scale".
The dubious position that being forced to participate in society invalidates his activism is addressed in response to reader letters, and so are consumers who consider themselves blameless cogs of the capitalist machine. Have you seen the web comic that goes something like:
That's not a defence of fossil fuels so much as noting that Berry's arguments here sits a little loosely with reality.