Aldo Leopold Quotes

Blessed be agriculture! if one does not have too much of it.

Every farm woodland, in addition to yielding lumber, fuel and posts, should provide its owner a liberal education. This crop of wisdom never fails, but it is not always harvested.

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

I say I am a Planetwalker. Then I have to explain that a Planetwalker is anyone who walks the planet as a lifestyle choice, as part of an education in the spirit and hope of using the journey to benefit the world.

We're setting up an urban farm for kids on more than 20 acres in New Orleans. We want to make this a world-class educational center for the community.

My father was a progressive farmer, and was always ready to lay aside an old plough if he could replace it with one better constructed for its work. All through life, I have ever been ready to buy a better plough.

Education is very important, and the botanical garden is the place to do that. I grew up in a semi-rural area and learned from that being my playground.

My daughter, the one who lives nearby, is raising her children to be very much aware. We went on a nature walk on Monday; I'm learning so much from her.

It results from our having such quantities of land to waste as we please. 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

Shall we encourage our young men to be farmers and mechanics? Yes, a thousand times yes, encourage them to become producers as well as consumers, to be owners and tillers of the soil as well as cultivators and rentors; teach them that it is just as honorable to be an honest farmer as to be a lawyer, teacher or a preacher, and the royal road to success and happiness is built on honest labor, either of muscle or brain.

Agricultural chemistry was not something that could be readily mastered by farmers, nor could the new machines be easily operated and maintained. Agricultural schools were needed to provide the necessary training. Then, if local gentry and rich households with large landholdings tried new methods—and if the new techniques were effective—the people will naturally follow them.

The problem, then, is how to bring about a striving for harmony with land among a people many of whom have forgotten there is any such thing as land, among whom education and culture have become almost synonymous with landlessness. This is the problem of conservation education.

The cultivation of the earth, as the primary and most certain source of national supply ... has intrinsically a strong claim to pre-eminence over every other kind of industry.

… whoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together.

Each year some 1,400 square miles of land in Northern China turns into desert …. Civilization can survive the loss of its oil reserves, but it cannot survive the loss of its soil reserves.

I am very active in the co-operative movement. I am very active in agro-industrial growth. I am taking up the issues of the farmers of India. I am active in the field of education.

So, I went to McGill University in Montreal to study soil chemistry and microbiology, which I did complete, but realized early that little of this could be applied in our country, because we were learning of a Green Revolution that would suit a farmer who had 3,500 acres and not our poor farmer.

Farmers, young and old, educated and uneducated, have easily taken to the new agronomy. It has been heart-warming to see young college graduates, retired officials, ex-armymen, illiterate peasants and small farmers queuing up to get the new seeds.

I had the privilege of knowing and working with Norman Borlaug - who has been aptly described by the Nobel Peace Prize Committee as the greatest hunger fighter of our time - for nearly 50 years.

Many of my contemporaries in the developed world see subsistence farming as soulful and organic, but it is a poverty trap and an environmental disaster.

A sustainable agriculture is one which depletes neither the people nor the land.

George Washington was quite a farmer. He was a farmer, Civil Engineer and gentleman. He made enough at civil engineering to indulge in both the other luxuries.

The discussion about food doesn't make any sense without discussion at the same time of land, land use, land policy, fertility maintenance, and farm infrastructure maintenance.

It's clear that agriculture, done right, is the best means the world has today to simultaneously tackle food security, poverty and environmental degradation.

As we move forward, you cannot resolve the potential food crisis or shortages without science being part of the solution. Science has to be part of the solution but African governments - and these are decisions for governments, whether they embrace or do not embrace genetically modified food - and for the moment, most African companies do not accept genetically modified seeds.