Margaret Atwood Quotes

American agriculture is badly in need of diversity. Another threat to the food system of course is the likelihood that petroleum is not going to get any cheaper.

Bring diversity back to agriculture. That's what made it work in the first place.

Large-scale deforestation can be prevented while increasing food production through better, smarter agriculture.

You don't look in the eyes of a carrot seed quite in the way you do a panda bear, but it's very important diversity.

Agriculture is our wisest pursuit, because it will in the end contribute most to real wealth, good morals, and happiness.

The great virtue of a diversified food economy, like a diverse pasture or farm, is its ability to withstand any shock. The important thing is that there be multiple food chains, so that when any one of them fails-when the oil runs out, when mad cow or other food-borne diseases become epidemic, when the pesticides no longer work, when drought strikes and plagues come and soils blow away-we'll still have a way to feed ourselves.

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

The system of seeds based on monoculture is wrong and inappropriate. The biodiverse system has produced more food, and biodiversity means that seeds must be in the hands of farmers.

I'd just rather not reap a crop every year.

Here is my Farm Relief bill: Every time a Southerner plants nothing on his farm but cotton year after year, and the Northerner nothing but wheat or corn, why, take a hammer and hit him twice right between the eyes. You may dent your hammer, but it will do more real good than all the bills you can pass in a year.

In the rotation of crops there was a recognized season for wild oats; but they were not sown more than once.

Let fields be devoted exclusively to the production of corn, oats, beans, peas, potatoes, and other food for man and beast; let corn be sown broadcast for fodder... and let all your efforts be directed to the prompt supply of these articles in the districts where our armies are operating.

Some environmentalists demands are counter productive. Avoiding pesticides for example means farming more land less efficiently, which leads to higher prices, more hunger, more disease …, and less biodiversity.

Floods, droughts, and natural disasters are a fact of life for farmers, ranchers, and foresters. They have persevered in the past, and they will adapt in the future - with the assistance of the scientists and experts at USDA.

If we didn't have a sustainable agriculture industry, who would be paying the then-missing taxes to support our defence, police, roads, airports, elderly, parks, public sporting facilities and much more?

We have to devise ways to lower the cost of production and reduce the risks involved in agriculture such as pests, pathogens, and weeds.

The British have such an odd relationship with food - and the land. I want the public and the Soil Association to see that growing things in a garden is no different to growing things in a field.

We don't want to bank all our risk on a small collection of big companies. We don't want to lose 20 percent of our business if one big account goes away.

In an attempt to have access to everything year-round, produce has lost its magic.

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.

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.

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.

Without the wholehearted involvement of farmers, particularly of young as well as women farmers, it will be impossible to implement a Food Entitlements Act in an era of increasing price volatility in the international market.