Monty Don Quotes

I'm perfectly happy to eat organic food, but if I choose to pay more for it, I don't pat myself on the back ethically. Quite the reverse. I think I'm actually being quite greedy, because what I'm doing is essentially saying, 'I want more land to be devoted to growing my food.'

I think that once I started connecting dots of where my food was coming from and the reality of that, as opposed to maybe what you think it is as a little kid, and the realities of how my food was getting to my plate and what the real effects of that are. When I started connecting those dots, I couldn't disconnect them.

Veganism is an answer for almost every problem facing the world in terms of hunger and climate change.

The time has come to recognize that food, how we produce it, process it, package it, sell it, cook it and eat it, is as important as any other issue.

Learning about issues such as sustainability and locavorism are things that you need to have as part of you as a chef because it will make you cook more delicious food.

In an organic system you don't waste anything. We need to educate the consumer to accept a tiny blemish on an orange.

It takes 10 kilograms of grain to produce one kilogram of beef, 15 liters of water to get one kilogram of beef, and those cows produce a lot of methane. Why not get rid of the cows?

Meat consumption is a part of our evolutionary heritage; meat production has been a major component of modern food systems. Carnivory should remain, within limits, an important component of a civilization that finally must learn how to maintain the integrity of its only biosphere.

I have a tremendous platform and responsibility to talk to people about these issues about sustainability and about health and wellness when it comes to food.

You see, the thing about us humans is we overcomplicate things. To eat, our food manufacturing processes work on a huge scale, clearing land, rearing livestock, killing it, packaging it. Go big, only to shrink it all back down to small enough to shove in our mouths.

If we gave up eating beef we would have roughly 20 to 30 times more land for food than we have now.

It's coming home to roost over the next 50 years or so. It's not just climate change; it's sheer space, places to grow food for this enormous horde. Either we limit our population growth or the natural world will do it for us, and the natural world is doing it for us right now.

Our food is safer and our diets are more diverse than ever before; production methods are becoming increasingly sustainable, clean and efficient; and we are constantly becoming better at protecting biodiversity.

Locally produced foods - defined as those harvested within a 100-mile radius of one's home - have a lesser impact on the environment because of the decreased need for transportation from source to consumer.

Why should conservationists have a positive interest in... farming? There are lots of reasons, but the plainest is: Conservationists eat.

If we can't afford to take good care of the land that feeds us, we're in an insurmountable mess.

Biofuels such as ethanol require enormous amounts of cropland and end up displacing either food crops or natural wilderness, neither of which is good.

The health of the planet is at stake, because the cruelty and the waste that accompanies the slaughter of billions of animals each year literally infects us all. We could consume healthy plant-based food produced at almost infinitely less cost. What does that say, really, about us and what we're doing... to animals and to ourselves?

According to the supermarkets, there is no such thing as 'out of season.' Berries in the middle of February? Why not? Seafood flown in from Japan? Sure. While it all adds up to appetizing and varied meals throughout the year, regardless of the weather, it comes with a price tag - both ethical and financial.

Supermarkets don't really sustain a community, and they completely remove people from the food chain.

There is no conflict between a better meal and a better world.

Right now my favorite book is 'Omnivores Dilemma.'

If everybody switched to organic farming, we couldn't support the earth's current population - maybe half.

To be interested in food but not in food production is clearly absurd.

India is mostly vegetarian, and I think that will be crucial to changing the world. I think the United States is lost.