David F. Houston Quotes

Profits might also increase, because improvements might take place in agriculture, or in the implements of husbandry, which would augment the produce with the same cost of production.

Because of technological limits, there is a certain amount of food that we can produce per acre. If we were to have intensive greenhouse agriculture, we could have much higher production.

Illinois surpasses every other spot of equal extent upon the face of the globe in fertility of soil and in the proportionable amount of the same which is sufficiently level for actual cultivation.

A thousand acres that can feed a thousand souls is better than ten thousand acres of no more effect.

No loss, in proportion to its amount, affects the interest of the nation so deeply, and vitally, and is so difficult to recover, as the loss of agricultural capital and produce

The most fertile soil does not necessarily produce the most abundant harvest. It is the use we make of our faculties which renders them valuable.

An orchard, good tillage, good grounds, seem a fixture, like a gold mine, or a river, to a citizen; but to a large farmer, not much more fixed than the state of the crop.

Agriculture specialists say our farm production is increasing and will go on increasing. Thank God.

There would be no advantage to be gained by sowing a field of wheat if the harvest did not return more than was sown.

Our neighbour's crop is always more fruitful and his cattle produce more milk than our own.

If you know how many acres you have sown of each kind of corn, inquire how much the acre the soil of that land takes for sowing, and count the number of quarters of seed, and you shall know the return of seed, and what ought to be over.

If women had equal access to fertilizer and modern farm machinery, developing countries would produce between 2.5-percent and 4-percent more food.

It looks as though yields of over 10 times what we can currently grow per acre are feasible if you control the CO2 concentration, the humidity, the temperature, all the various factors that plants depend on to grow rapidly.

Let me tell you about a place where technology won't work. When you walk onto a farm and are standing on soil, there is no technology that is going to take that soil and transform it into something that is five times more productive.

It is obvious that the greatest and most important service that is required of our agriculture under existing conditions is an enlarged production of the staple food crops.

We can produce more per acre on a fifth of the fuel as the industrial food system.

You've got a global food problem. You've got a food problem in the United States. You've got a food problem in Africa... in Asia. And so the truth is, the U.S. is going to have to produce more, on not very many more acres, honestly. And so we're going to have to do a better job.

Corn is the leading food and feed crop of the United States in geographic range of production, acreage, and quantity of product. The vital importance of a large acreage of this crop, properly cared for, therefore, is obvious.

All over the land are vast and handsome pastures, with good grass for cattle, and it strikes me the soil would be very fertile were the country inhabited and improved by reasonable people.

The agricultural potential of Africa is unlimited.

In many parts of Ireland the breed of cows is so wretched that feeding them involves a certain loss of land.

… whoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together.

Improving the productivity of crops is fundamental to ending extreme poverty. Sixty percent of people in sub-Saharan Africa earn their living by working the land. But given the region’s generally low agricultural productivity—yields of basic cereals are five times higher in North America—Africa remains a net importer of food. This gap between supply and demand will only grow as the number of mouths to feed increases.

It's important to concede that modern pesticides have helped to make farming more productive and to increase yields.

Green Revolution technologies are scale-neutral but not resource-neutral. Inputs are needed for output; therefore market-purchased inputs become important in providing soil and plant healthcare for higher yields.