David F. Houston Quotes

Agricultural husbandry essentially maintains the balance of bound nitrogen.

Cursing the weather is not good farming

In the rotation of crops there was a recognized season for wild oats; but they were not sown more than once.

We can move water easily with plastic pipes. We can move shade around with nursery cloth like a tinker toy for animals and plants. Yet we have developed this necessity to grow food with chemical fertiliser because we have forgotten the magic of manure.

A soil, exhausted by the long culture of Pagan empires, was to lie fallow for a still longer period.

China's use of 'night soil,' as the Chinese rightly call a manure that is collected after dark, is probably the reason that its soils are still healthy after four millennia of intensive agriculture, while other great civilizations - the Maya, for one - floundered when their soils turned to dust.

I've always thought the main argument for organic was more environmental than a health argument. I just don't think spraying a lot of pesticides into the environment on a routine basis is a good thing.

The winter period between September and March in this country, when land sits fallow and is subject to topsoil loss, we could be enriching the soil and growing all the biomass we need to replace imported gasoline.

Vegetables deplete soil. They're extractive. If soil has a bank account, vegetables make the largest withdrawals.

People are going to buy cheap fertilizer so they can grow enough crops to feed themselves, which will be increasingly difficult with climate change.

The more we can grow on already cultivated land, the better.

I have learned how to plant coastal hay, fertilize and bale it.

I grew up shopping from farm stands. Dad taught me how to smell a good cantaloupe and thump a watermelon for ripeness.

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.

In many places where coffee is grown, deforestation is a major issue.

How we grow food has enormous effects on the environment - climate change as well as pollution of air, water, and soil.

I hope people will learn more about agriculture in America. About locally grown farming and about water conservation. About how much pollution results from beef and pig farming.

We grow our own vegetables.

I want to pursue farming, and what better place to do it than at a hill station, which has a cool climate almost through the year.

Naturally healthy soil can sustain coffee crops for generations to come. All of this contributes to the quality of the bean.

Large-scale deforestation can be prevented while increasing food production through better, smarter agriculture.

Agriculture involves crop husbandry, animal husbandry, forestry and fisheries. Your income will go up only if you look at the system, and not from one crop alone.

Where two or more crops are taken normally, it is time to begin preparation for a good rabi crop by assembling the seeds, soil nutrients, and other agronomic inputs needed for timely sowing and good plant population.

My label is just "good farming", which isn't something you can put on a t-shirt.

As far as my planting program goes, I simply broadcast rye and barley seed on separate fields in the fall . . . while the rice in those areas is still standing. A few weeks after that I harvest the rice, and then spread its straw back over the fields as mulch.