David Ricardo 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.

What farmers gain most of all from the increase in agricultural productivity, of course, is choice.

There is no time in modern agriculture for a farmer to write a poem or compose a song.

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.

The more you eliminate the inefficient use of information, the better it is for productivity.

The history of American agriculture suggests that you can have transformation without a master plan, without knowing all the answers up front.

In general, we run the farm like a business instead of a welfare recipient, and we adhere to historically-validated patterns.

A boss is all about good business, so start with everything that you can control and you can turn up that costs you nothing, then lay all the knobs out, look at all the controls, all the remotes, and just turn them all up. It don't cost you nothing.

One of the ways I think you make more money is by creating more efficiency.

Autonomous tractors would enable a farmer to focus on the work that matters the most on a farm.

When times are tough, we tend to outperform as margins increase.

If I were to spend investor money on nice furnishings and so forth, particularly early on, I might not have it for opportunities that can really grow our business.

Now one person doing the job of one and a half. So as an employer I can get two people to do the work of three, and think about what that does for profits.

On a farm the best fertilizer is the master's eye.

Ronald Reagan's idea of a good farm program was Hee Haw.

Agriculture engenders good sense, and good sense of an excellent kind.

We want to get full value out of labour so that we may be able to pay it full value. It is use - not conservation - that interests us.

A manager may be tough and practical, squeezing out, while the going is good, the last ounce of profit and dividend . . .

In Europe the object is to make the most of their land, labour being abundant: here it is to make the most of our labour, land being abundant.

Lab to land - how to get what is done in the lab to the land, to the farmer.

I thought that, given the system of rewards central to our economic system, in which profit maximization is valued above all else and specifically above life, it is probably just as irresistible to the owners of capital (human or otherwise) to exploit workers (and the land): "Nothing personal," they say as they load their property onto the ship bound for the Middle Passage, "but a man's gotta turn a dime."

Over 80% of the poor are people who have small plots of land and grow their own food and they don't grow enough to sell much into the marketplace. So they will be hit hard by the worst in climate. They really get hit hard starting in the 20-year time frame and thereafter.

It's all about new techniques -- simplifying old techniques, and consolidating steps. Making things go faster, but not worse.

A land full of places that are not worth caring about may soon be a nation and a way of life that is not worth defending.

Where there are few people, and a great quantity of fertile land, the power of the earth to afford a yearly increase of food may be compared to a great reservoir of water, supplied by a moderate stream. The faster population increases, the more help will be got to draw off the water, and consequently an increasing quantity will be taken every year. But the sooner, undoubtedly, will the reservoir be exhausted, and the streams only remain.