James C. Scott Quotes

Our Indian neighbors are advancing, many of them with spirit, and others beginning to engage in the pursuits of agriculture and household manufacture. They are becoming sensible that the earth yields subsistence with less labor and more certainty than the forest.

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 been proven that of all the interventions to reduce poverty, improving agricultural productivity is the best.

I have been busy working in order to make agriculture a priority sector not on a small scale, but into an agro-based industry.

Most of the people in the world are poor, so if we knew the economics of being poor, we would know much of the economics that really matters. Most of the world's poor people earn their living from agriculture, so if we knew the economics of agriculture, we would know much of the economics of being poor.

The fundamental for the sustainable growth of Nigeria is not in the hydro-carbon industry but in agriculture.

It Is in the Agricultural Sector That the Battle for Long- Term Economic Development Will Be Won or Lost.

If we get agriculture right in Africa, where most of the people now are working in that sector, not only would it help boost development but we will be secure in terms of food and nutrition and then be able to move on to other areas.

If farmers become weak the country loses self-reliance but if they are strong, freedom also becomes strong. If we do not maintain our progress in agriculture, poverty cannot be eliminated from India.But our biggest poverty alleviation programme is to improve the living standard of our farmers. The thrust of our poverty alleviation programmes is on the uplift of the farmers.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, where agriculture represents two-thirds of all employment, governments are proving that resource commitments yield success. In 2004, African heads of state pledged 10 percent of their national budgets to achieve 6 percent annual growth in agriculture. By 2008, 20 African countries had met or exceeded that 6 percent target.

Contrasting sharply, in the developing countries represented by India, Pakistan, and most of the countries in Asia and Africa, seventy to eighty percent of the population is engaged in agriculture, mostly at the subsistence level.

Improving Africa's farming sector would have multiple positive outcomes for African people.

The American government policy on what we supported and subsidised in agriculture was a social experiment on a whole generation of children.

We must then build a proper relationship between the richest and the poorest countries based on our desire that they are able to fend for themselves with the investment that is necessary in their agriculture, so that Africa is not a net importer of food, but an exporter of food.

If African farmers can use improved seeds and better practices to grow more crops and get them to market, then millions of families can earn themselves a better living and a better life.

Most countries in Africa have the capacity to be great agricultural producers, but they do only subsistence production. So a family will produce for themselves and nothing more. Why? Because of the systems: The markets are not there to go beyond.

We're trying to bring improved seeds to rural villages to increase yields. We're also trying to improve the roads to make it easier for people to get their produce to the market.

Women in Africa are really the pillar of the society, are the most productive segment of society, actually. They do agriculture.

To me, the most critical thing in agriculture is investing in the peasant agriculture, transforming peasant agriculture.

We recognize that the majority of people who are food-insecure or hungry in the world live in rural areas. And most of them are small holder subsistence farmers.

Africa's agricultural sector has enormous scope for development, which would benefit both the continent's economy and its people.

Industrial agriculture freed many people to pursue lives their parents and grandparents could never have. It made America modern.

When tillage begins, other arts follow. The farmers, therefore, are the founders of human civilization.

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

Concentrate our strength in agriculture and increase our potential.