Novalis Quotes
We are on a mission: we are called to the cultivation of the earth .
Novalis. Philosophical Writings. Translated by Margaret Mahony Stoljar, State University of New York Press, 1997, p. 27.
Slogan of British land reform movement led by Collings against the ministry of Lord Salisbury and in favor of Joseph Chamberlain.
These were amazingly accurate assessments at a time when this was not at all obvious to most. The large mechanization of agriculture would take place in the 1830s and 1840s but this astute observer saw the intellectual ideas impinging on society and realized that it was only a matter of time for these ideas to be implemented and bring great change to agriculture. That change has never stopped and continues at an even more rapid pace in modern times making American Agriculture the most efficient and effective in the world.
Environmentalists counter with the fact that the corporate and government interests in growth at any cost will, and have in the past, found a loophole in every reasonable compromise that has been made. Reasonableness is only a device they use to slow regulation until they can either figure out a loophole or use their great fiscal resources to shape public thinking to soften or eliminate the regulation. Therefore some environments argue that they must be as ideological about the environment as the corporations are about their rights to profit and not compromise even when a compromise appears reasonable. Besides, if the corporations always appear to win, the public will think opposing them is futile. So when they can be beaten on something that is unreasonable, they appear weaker and encourage more environmental public activism.
At the time the vast majority of Americans were farmers. That is the tradition and reality which caused the Department of Agriculture to become one of the most important cabinet departments. However, by the 21st century the Department of Agriculture had over 100,000 employees plus many more consultants and contractors. They had done their job so well that productivity eliminated the need for most of the farms. And the number of people earning the majority of their living as farmers is less than 1 million. So there are only 10 farmers for each employee of the Agriculture Department.
Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg, better known by his pen name Novalis (German pronunciation: [noˈvaːlɪs]), was an 18th-century German aristocrat, poet, author, mystic and philosopher of Early German Romanticism.
