John Lawson Quotes

I would like to see people more aware of where their food comes from. I would like to see small farmers empowered. I feed my daughter almost exclusively organic food.

No civilization worthy of the name has every been founded on any agricultural basis other than that of cereals.

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.

Look at our farmers' markets today, bursting with heritage breeds and heirloom varieties, foods that were once abundant when we were an agricultural nation, but that we have lost touch with. Bringing all these back helps us connect to our roots, our communities and helps us feed America the proper way.

We've gotten so far away from our food source. It's been hijacked from us. But if you get soil, plant something in it and water it, you can feed yourself. It's that simple.

Without the potato, the balance of European power might never have tilted north.

When you're looking at small languages, the population of speakers is so small that there might not be people with the expertise in science or agronomy to write optimal planting strategies for maize in the local language.

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

If we make it national policy that we will support small farmers the way we support agribusiness, we'll suddenly see it change in terms of the cost of organic food.

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

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

The greatest service which can be rendered any country is to add a useful plant to its culture.

Within a century or so after the discovery of America, more than fifty new foods had been carried back to the Old World, including maize, turkey, white potato, pumpkin, squash, the so-called Jerusalem artichoke, avocado, chocolate, and several kinds of beans. Potatoes and maize now rank second and third in total tonnage of the world's crops, behind rice but ahead of what is probably man's oldest cultivated grain, wheat.

All of Europe’s potatoes descended from few tubers sent across the ocean by curious Spaniards… the potato was as important to the modern era as the invention of the steam engine.

The humble American sweet potato helped China double its population to 300 million by 1800.

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

We must continue as in millennia past, nourishing the future as we feed ourselves and, each year, plant only the very best of what we have collectively engineered.

My dream is to be a farmer myself, but also to provide opportunities to others who don't have the land or the resources, in order to grow food themselves and teach them how to do it.

Imagine all the food mankind has produced over the past 8,000 years. Now consider that we need to produce that same amount again — but in just the next 40 years if we are to feed our growing and hungry world.

We should take a lesson from the Irish potato famine: monocultures are vulnerable. Monocultures of any kind are very vulnerable, because one change and you're cooked. So we should be diversifying, wouldn't you say?

Every time we sit at a table at night or in the morning to enjoy the fruits and grain and vegetables from our good earth, remember that they come from the work of men and women and children who have been exploited for generations.

If we estimate dignity by immediate usefulness, agriculture is undoubtedly the first and noblest science.

It is only with local [agriculture] that we can manage the complexity and care that sustainability requires.

Growing food was the first activity that gave us enough prosperity to stay in one place, form complex social groups, tell our stories, and build our cities.

We have taken plants from the capitalist system where the most important thing was to produce, especially in Cuba.