Jeremy Rifkin Quotes

You've got a global food problem. You've got a food problem in the United States. You've got a food problem in Africa... in Asia. And so the truth is, the U.S. is going to have to produce more, on not very many more acres, honestly. And so we're going to have to do a better job.

To suggest that organic vegetables, which cost far more than conventional produce, can feed billions of people in parts of the world without roads or proper irrigation may be a fantasy based on the finest intentions. But it is a cruel fantasy nonetheless.

If everyone wants to eat like people in Bangladesh, then we would have food coming out of everybody's ears.

We shouldn't let anti-science zealotry shut down the ability to produce low-cost, quality food for billions across the globe.

A country like America has twice as much food on its shop shelves and in its restaurants than is actually required to feed the American people.

I wish that the world's food was spread evenly on everybody's plate, and that no-one got more or less than anyone else.

A safe, affordable and plentiful supply of food is a national security issue.

I used to work a lot on food issues and every time somebody predicted that production would be inadequate they got egg on their face a year or two later.

We Americans have food in massive oversupply. That oversupply has crushed farm prices. We must dispose of the surpluses in order to strengthen prices, and we should dispose of them by feeding the starving and hungry overseas and the malnourished at home.

For the first time we have the technical capacity to free mankind from the scourge of hunger.

The single most important problem with food in this country is that it is vastly overproduced.

When there is enough food to feed everyone, why are 870 million people going hungry? We must learn to share what we have; no one race or nation has a greater right to life than another.

Food is at the core of our lives in ways we don't always think about - how it affects our environment, how it affects our health and well-being, how it affects the expense of society, the expense of government.

You can't have a world where 50 percent of the people are dieting and 50 percent of the people are starving if you want stability.

Few people sufficiently appreciate the colossal task of feeding a world of billions of omnivores who demand meat with their potatoes.

In many places in the developed world, we eat or waste probably twice as many food calories as we really need. We're wasteful of food. We ship all over the world. We're now realizing that generating the energy to ship the food around the world is also ruining our climate.

The reasons for food insecurity are many and varied. But part of the problem is the global farming systems.

Food has become such an interesting issue in the nation and the world.

The focus of Congress is on keeping the nation secure - and it doesn't see that food security is an essential part of that responsibility. Instead of putting more food on the tables of America, they are busy finding ways to take it away.

If you eat, you should be concerned about the people who are providing you with food.

In countries around the world, people spend more money on food because they know how precious it is.

This year alone, total world cereal production was estimated to be 2,114 million tons, while total cereal demand was projected at around 1007 million tones, less than half of the cereal production. Ideally, no one should starve or die of hunger in the world we live. Strangely and sadly enough, they do. This is not fair. This is not right.

When you introduce markets in food, then you introduce two very simple rules. The first rule is this: if you have money you can get the food from wherever around the world. The other rule markets impose is this: if you do not have money, you will starve. ... The reason why people starve is because of poverty ... not because of a shortage of food ... but because the only way to access the food is through the market.

We take it for granted that because our shelves and supermarkets are heaving with food that there are no problems with food security. But we have limited land in the U.K., and climate disruption and population growth are putting pressure on food supply.

We have been growing more food than we need since the '60s... what we have is a terrible distribution problem.