Kimbal Musk Quotes

Urbanites may picture farmers as hip heritage-pig breeders returning to the land, or a struggling rural underclass waging a doomed battle to hang on to their patrimony as agribusiness moves in. But these stereotypes are misleading.

Here is my Farm Relief bill: Every time a Southerner plants nothing on his farm but cotton year after year, and the Northerner nothing but wheat or corn, why, take a hammer and hit him twice right between the eyes. You may dent your hammer, but it will do more real good than all the bills you can pass in a year.

Thanks to farm subsidies, the fine collaboration between agribusiness and Congress, soy, corn and cattle became king. And chicken soon joined them on the throne. It was during this period that the cycle of dietary and planetary destruction began, the thing we're only realizing just now.

We've gotten so good at growing food that we've gone, in a few generations, from nearly half of Americans living on farms to 2 percent. We no longer think about how the wonderful things in the grocery store got there, and we'd like to go back to what we think is a more natural way.

Industrial agriculture characteristically proceeds by single solutions to single problems: If you want the most money from your land this year, grow the crops for which the market price is highest.

I was introduced to the world of modern food production in the mid-1990s, while researching an article about California's strawberry industry for the 'Atlantic Monthly.'

The farmer has to be an optimist or he wouldn't still be a farmer.

If an industrialist can sell his products anywhere in India and the world, why should a farmer not be allowed to do so?

The rich agricultural nations are the ones that can adapt to the new biotechnologies.

We're going to move from a commodity economy where you basically grow the same kind of crops - where a kernel of corn is a kernel of corn is a kernel of corn - to an ingredient economy where there will be a kernel of corn that will be designed for fuel, there will be a kernel of corn designed for livestock.

On the professional side, those 18 years on the farm instilled my love for agriculture.

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

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

Farmers and ranchers need long-term certainty about who they will be able to sell to and under what terms.

The small family farm is dying; people's lives are being dislocated.

We are reaching a stage where the source of food has become markets and supermarkets. On a sub-conscious level, we are becoming unaware of the original source, which is land.

It is only by understanding the cultural complexity and largeness of the concept of agriculture that we can see the threatening diminishments implied by the term 'agribusiness.'

The whole problem of industrial agriculture is putting all of your eggs in one basket. We need to diversify our food chains as well as our fields so that when some of them fail, we can still eat.

Predicting oil prices is anyone's guess.

The options and futures traded on exchanges are derivatives contracts.

Agriculture can trigger job-led economic growth, provided it becomes intellectually satisfying and economically rewarding.

Everybody told me I was making a mistake by going into this business, but I know how to grow hair as well as I know how to grow cotton.

To sum up, agriculture has made important progress and our farmers have now shown that they are second to none in terms of improving production and productivity.

Too often, the public can fall into the trap of investing when stock prices are rising, not dropping.

I believe that agriculture land - productive agricultural land with water on site - will be valuable in the future.