Allen Boyd Quotes

The only way to keep food prices down is to keep them [farmers] down on the farm after they've seen the parity.

We must help parents protect their children from the gravest health threat that they face -- an epidemic of teen smoking, spread by multimillion dollar marketing campaigns. I challenge Congress -- let's pass bipartisan, comprehensive legislation that will improve public health, protect our tobacco farmers and change the way tobacco companies do business forever. Let's do what it takes to bring teen smoking down. Let's raise the price of cigarettes by up to $1.50 a pack over the next 10 years with penalties on the tobacco industry if it keeps marketing to our children.

Are we going to take the hands of the federal government completely off any effort to adjust the growing of national crops, and go right straight back to the old principle that every farmer is a lord of his own farm and can do anything he wants, raise anything, any old time, in any quantity, and sell any time he wants?

The Government in the US has become responsible for farmers’ income, leaving the big (transnational) buyers in the market free to exploit their oligopolistic position

One of the many economic differences between developed and developing countries is that developed countries subsidize farmers while developing countries tax farmers.

Haitian rice farmers are quite efficient, but they can't compete with U.S. agribusiness that relies on a huge government subsidy, thanks to Ronald Reagan's free market enthusiasms.

The government simply waits for farmers to grow their crops - nine months of growing grapes, then two to three weeks of drying them in the sun. Then it takes away a part of that crop and stores it in warehouses around California.

There is no reason, in a free society, that farmers shouldn’t be allowed to raise hemp. Hemp is a good product.

Love one another, make something with your hands, and exalt the farmer.

The quota idea is a good one, but there are two problems with it. The first is clear: A quota system would also require all European countries to be prepared to take refugees. And secondly: What happens when the quota has been filled? Would we then simply tell those who are threatened, sorry but we have to send you back?

Don't let tobacco companies make the choices for you... they care about their own well-being, not yours

I've died so many times in so many movies. What is it about my face that people want to kill it? I'm sure they would've killed Kitty Farmer if they could've!

In Europe, when tobacco was first introduced, it was immediately banned. In Turkey, if you got caught with tobacco, you had your nose slit. China and Russia imposed the death penalty for possession of tobacco.

One might ask why tobacco is legal and marijuana not. A possible answer is suggested by the nature of the crop.

Whether talking about addiction, taxation [on cigarettes] or education [about smoking], there is always at the center of the conversation an essential conundrum: How come we're selling this deadly stuff anyway?

We were just country people. All my grandfathers had farms. They had chickens, cattle and tried to get by farming, for the most part.

We try to prevent the creation of artificial rents. Rather than setting up quotas to stop imports we levy a tariff, that would be better. Or we pay wages in the public sector which are roughly equivalent to the productivity in the private sector and we don't therefore make it a special benefit to get a bureaucratic position.

How will you know a good farmer when you meet him? He will not ask you for any favors.

Smoking cigarettes seems to alarm peace activists much more than voting for Reagan does.

One would understand a ban on surrogate advertising, but to completely ban [smoking] is ridiculous, a joke taken too far.

Some kids have never seen what a real tomato looks like off the vine. They don't know where a cucumber comes from. And that really affects the way they view food. So a garden helps them really get their hands dirty, literally, and understand the whole process of where their food comes from. And I wanted them to see just how challenging and rewarding it is to grow your own food, so that they would better understand what our farmers are doing every single day across this country and have an appreciation for ... that American tradition of growing our own food and feeding ourselves.

It is illegal for children to purchase tobacco in every state in the country. And in every state ... tobacco companies have invested enormous sums of money and time to encourage widespread lawbreaking.

If you create an artificial scarcity through public policy, artificial rent so to speak - setting up a new import quota or giving out a particular office that is very beneficial - people are going to invest money, time and resources in trying to secure that opportunity. If the value is created independently of the search for it, the search for it is wasted.

It's ironic that those who till the soil, cultivate and harvest the fruits, vegetables, and other foods that fill your tables with abundance have nothing left for themselves.

It was Sunday morning (one a.m.), a not unusual time for some farmers, after a late Saturday night, to have a look round their stock and decide to send for the vet.