Wendell Berry, the Kentucky-born author, farmer and environmentalist celebrated for his writing on rural life and criticism of industrial society, has died aged 92 at his home in Port Royal, Kentucky. His daughter, Mary Berry, confirmed his death on Monday, saying "there's not enough I could say about him to do him justice." Berry's decades of poetry, fiction and essays championed traditional farming communities and warned against the excesses of commercialisation, influencing figures such as food writer Michael Pollan and chef Alice Waters.

Born in Henry County in 1934 and raised on his grandfather's farm during the Great Depression, Berry published more than 40 books, including the novels Nathan Coulter and A Place on Earth, and lived without television or computers, later installing solar panels in 2005 as a statement against Kentucky's coal-dependent power. He cut ties with his alma mater, the University of Kentucky, after it accepted $7m from coal-linked donors, and joined a 2011 sit-in against strip-mining. Though never awarded a Pulitzer or National Book Award, he received a National Humanities Medal and a lifetime achievement award from the National Book Critics Circle in 2016.