Michael Pollan Quotes

Maybe a person's time would be as well spent raising food as raising money to buy food.

Anybody interested in solving, rather than profiting from, the problems of food production and distribution will see that in the long run the safest food supply is a local food supply, not a supply that is dependent on a global economy. Nations and regions within nations must be left free and should be encouraged to develop the local food economies that best suit local needs and local conditions.

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.

I want for us to be self-sustained so we can export. The government has a responsibility to have agricultural programs so people are able to grow their own food.

The economy of the 21st century will come to center on agriculture. Life will be intensely and profoundly local in ways that we can't conceive of today. Economic growth, as we have known it in a cheap energy industrial paradigm, will cease.

We have to grow our food differently because industrial farming will soon end. That means growing more food locally on smaller farms with more human attention.

I probably grow half my food. It's a good way to keep perspective.

There is a growing market today for local, organic foods produced by small farmers. And farmers' markets have played a large role in making that happen.

An almost forgotten means of economic self-reliance is the home production of food. We are too accustomed to going to stores and purchasing what we need.

The future of our nation depends on our ability to produce food and fiber to sustain the world.

I think the only real knowledge I had before I went to Iowa was what I learned from 'Food Inc'. But once I got there and developed these extensive relationships with the farmers, I realized that we're basically made of corn.

Even during the rationing period, during World War II, we didn't have the anxiety that we'd starve, because we grew our own potatoes, you know? And our own hogs, and our own cows and stuff, you know.

Supermarkets don't really sustain a community, and they completely remove people from the food chain.

Know you food, know your farmers, and know your kitchen. Start building up your larder! We don't even use that term any more.

To address our current food system problems, I propose a series of local, regional, national and global conversations - starting around the dinner table - to rethink the food we produce, buy and eat.

I'm a farmer now, and it's fantastic. My goal is to be totally self-sufficient and grow everything that I eat. There's something about earning your dinner that's cool.

I have a generally optimistic temperament and am thrilled by what I see as a rapidly growing food movement, especially among young people who care about how food is produced and what it does to their health and the environment.

If people grow things themselves, their children understand, then schools in the area know that this community's generating something with its own energy, to consume.

We have to understand that we want to pay the farmers the real price for the food that they produce. It won't ever be cheap to buy real food. But it can be affordable. It's really something that we need to understand. It's the kind of work that it takes to grow food. We don't understand that piece of it.

We should all grow our own food and do our own waste processing, we really should.

Each country has to decide how to best engage their own citizens and their own policy environment to ensure they can produce the food they need.

In the five years from 2007 to 2012, we only gained a little over 1,200 farmers. Since we aren't going to stop eating, we have to reverse that trend, or we'll see even more consolidation, more corporate farms, or increasing food imports; none of that is in our interest.

Once you engage with the simple enough business of feeding yourself, of soil and water, weather, season and harvest, it becomes personal. It is about you, your family and friends. Food becomes an aspect of those relationships as well as your intimacy with your plot.

We undervalue food in this country, yet Britain has beautiful food and beautiful growing conditions. It is astonishing the range we can grow.

For me, creating a supply chain of what we should be eating is incredibly complicated. It's complicated to figure out how to change the food system in America.