Food Self-Sufficiency Quotes

With China’s 1.4 billion increasingly affluent consumers starting to compete with U. S. consumers for the U. S. grain harvest, cheap food seen by many as an American birthright, may be coming to an end.

In this era of tightening world food supplies, the ability to grow food is fast becoming a new form of geopolitical leverage, and countries are scrambling to secure their own parochial interests at the expense of the common good.

How is the government going to run without people like us? We make 35 percent of the bread in this country, and that much of the margarine, and cooking oil, and all the other things.

If there is to be any hope of prosperity for this country it is by reversing that policy which made us simply the kitchen garden for supplying the British with cheap food.

There is no intrinsic reason African countries should be importing, rather than exporting, basic staples like rice or higher value products like frozen chicken, cooking oil, or instant noodles.

I don't like to leave what I'm going to eat in other people's hands, so I'll pack my own lunch. I chop up a salad with lots of greens - everything from spinach, baby spinach, arugula, cucumber, avocado, radish, cauliflower, and green olives to parsley and cilantro, all chopped really fine - with a piece of wild salmon. I even bring my own tea in a Thermos.

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

If you go to Italy and you drive from the airport to the town, there isn't 30 square feet that isn't planted by someone. Even next to the train tracks, they see the joy of the interaction with the planet as integral to the experience. The idea that you can get free arugula just by planting seeds... because it will regrow itself the next year. We've come a long way from foraging to now planting. The next step of that will be continuing that expansion of planting and really owning the crops.

Now listen, the one thing about agriculture is we've lost our manufacturing, we've lost a great deal of jobs overseas, lots of our industry. The last thing in the world we need to do is lose the ability to produce our food.

We can't begin to feed ourselves with a local-centric system if we lock up land in royal manor models.

If Kuwait grew carrots we wouldn't give a damn.

When you cook, you get to shop. You get to vote if you want the pastured raised pork or the organic grain. You can get to help produce your agricultural system, and you give that up when you outsource your cooking. You become dependent on what's offered - and that's a shame.

It will be very foolhardy and suicidal for a country like India to forgo food security.

In my opinion, if there is one extremely legitimate use for petroleum besides running wood chippers and front-end loaders to handle compost, it's making plastic for season extension. It parks many of the trucks [for cross-country produce transportation]. With the trucks parked, greenhouses, tall tunnels, and more seasonal, localized eating, can we feed ourselves? We still have to answer that burning question.

There won't be some overnight miracle cure. But the measures I take will be sustainable. Our goal is to cease food imports within four years. This will create a minimum of 2 million jobs in agriculture.