Bill McKibben Quotes

Look at our farmers' markets today, bursting with heritage breeds and heirloom varieties, foods that were once abundant when we were an agricultural nation, but that we have lost touch with. Bringing all these back helps us connect to our roots, our communities and helps us feed America the proper way.

Understanding where your food comes from, trying to bolster local farmers and local economies and having a better connection to the food around you and the people around you, only good can come of that. I love to be involved with things like that.

It is only with local [agriculture] that we can manage the complexity and care that sustainability requires.

We have to grow our food differently because industrial farming will soon end. That means growing more food locally on smaller farms with more human attention.

Maybe a person's time would be as well spent raising food as raising money to buy food.

Despite all the hype about local or green food, the single biggest impediment to wider adoption is not research, programs, organizations, or networking. It is the demonizing and criminalizing of virtually all indigenous and heritage-based food practices.

Instead of buying into the global agenda, which is using food as just industrial stuff, we would say we view food as biological, a living thing, that belongs in smaller communities.

There's a lot of American kids think their food comes from the grocery store and the concept of seasonality has no meaning to them whatsoever.

What people don't think about when they think about New York is this amazing farmland that grows wonderful fruits, vegetables, seafood, game, and fowl just outside of Manhattan.

A secure and independent agricultural peasantry is the only base on which a people rises.

The best way to feed the world in 50 years is to grow food where most of us live—in cities.

In an attempt to have access to everything year-round, produce has lost its magic.

Strong communities are built around local, real food. Food we trust to nourish our bodies, the farmer and planet.

My dream is to be a farmer myself, but also to provide opportunities to others who don't have the land or the resources, in order to grow food themselves and teach them how to do it.

American agriculture is badly in need of diversity. Another threat to the food system of course is the likelihood that petroleum is not going to get any cheaper.

In the rush to industrialize farming, we've lost the understanding, implicit since the beginning of agriculture, that food is a process, a web of relationships, not an individual ingredient or commodity.

I think that if people would be willing to grow some of their own food or eat locally grown organic foods on a regular basis we could significantly decrease the amount of harmful chemicals we pump into our soil every day.

The first thing I feel like we have the potential to do is to deliver to consumers more roots to their home.

Civilization as it is known today could not have evolved, nor can it survive, without an adequate food supply.

Almost all the knowledge required to produce more food than eroding soil is available today - we just need to use that knowledge within a holistic paradigm - managing agriculture holistically, forming the policies that undergird it holistically.

I think Jamaica would thrive if we promote agriculture as a way to bring people here.

We've been so disconnected agriculturally and culturally from food. We spend more time on dieting than on cooking.

My real emphasis is on the farmers who are taking care of the land, the farmers who are really thinking about our nourishment.

We have to bring children into a new relationship to food that connects them to culture and agriculture.

Basically, the person in the White House should be principled, should have a philosophy about food that relates directly to organic agriculture. I will continue to push for that.