Megan McArdle Quotes

Food and the way we grow it and produce it are a major cause of environmental degradation.

Cereal production in the rain-fed areas still remains relatively unaffected by the impact of the green revolution, but significant change and progress are now becoming evident in several countries.

These and other developments in the field of agriculture contain the makings of a new revolution. It is not a violent Red Revolution like that of the Soviets, nor is it a White Revolution like that of the Shah of Iran. I call it the Green Revolution

Civilization depends on our expanding ability to produce food efficiently, which has markedly accelerated thanks to science and technology.

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

All the people of the earth could be fed from the land within a circle of a thousand mile radius [of Kansas City.]

There is talk about the need for a second Green Revolution. However, such a revolution is nowhere in sight.

The Second Green Revolution, as the world's population grows to over 9 billion by 2050, is the new revolution we have to have to lift food production by another 75 percent.

There are no miracles in agricultural production.

Even as the population doubled from three to six billion, we managed to race ahead with all kinds of technological and scientific events in agriculture - from using more fertilizers to mechanization to advanced plant breeding.

Almost all the knowledge required to produce more food than eroding soil is available today - we just need to use that knowledge within a holistic paradigm - managing agriculture holistically, forming the policies that undergird it holistically.

Some environmentalists demands are counter productive. Avoiding pesticides for example means farming more land less efficiently, which leads to higher prices, more hunger, more disease …, and less biodiversity.

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.

Feeding the world will be one of the greatest challenges of the 21st century. It will be impossible without using scientific advancements and biotechnology.

The Green Revolution focused on the big three - maize, rice and wheat - and the Green Revolution did not adapt the big three to African conditions, other than South Africa, as much as they should have.

GMOs play a central role in meeting the challenge of providing affordable and nutritious food to consumers all over the world.

Looking ahead, the bright spot in Indian agriculture is the availability of a large untapped production reservoir.

In a world of growing food demand, Africa is home to two-thirds of the world's unexploited arable land.

A country that cannot feed itself cannot have self-pride, and in the mid-'60s 20 percent of all the wheat produced in America came into India. We were agriculturally a basket case. And 15 years later, 20 years later, we have become an agricultural power. This is the famous Green Revolution.

Modern agriculture has been accurately described as a way of turning oil into food. As the price of oil continues to rise, so will the price of food.

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

Agriculture is not crop production as popular belief holds - it's the production of food and fiber from the world's land and waters. Without agriculture it is not possible to have a city, stock market, banks, university, church or army. Agriculture is the foundation of civilization and any stable economy.

Now listen, the one thing about agriculture is we've lost our manufacturing, we've lost a great deal of jobs overseas, lots of our industry. The last thing in the world we need to do is lose the ability to produce our food.

In fact, because of their connection to the land, farmers do more to protect and preserve our environment than almost anyone else. They are some of the best environmentalists around.

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