Quotes About Agriculture

He plough'd her, and she cropp'd.

When a farm or a family is stricken, nature destroys what humankind has made. Houses peel and crumble. Tilled fields are subsumed by weeds and grasses. Well-tended orchards become knotted, spectral forests. The earth, given an opening, always reclaims itself and obliterates order—erasing the outward evidence of an agrarian society.

They had to pay taxes on fruit trees whether or not they bore fruit, Gorbachev remembered, "so peasants cut down their orchards.

need four good mules for pulling the

I am not a pig farmer. The pigs had a great time, but I didn't make any money.

Josiah Parkes, inventor of a tile system for draining soils.

Agriculture for an honorable and high-minded man, is the best of all occupations and arts by which men procure the means of living.

If spring never comes, does that mean summer won't either? How will the crops grow when the fields are covered with snow?

All good farmers become connoisseurs of dirt and dust.

A type of humility marks a real farmer. Those of us who battle nature all year must ultimately accept the had we're dealt.

Later in conversation he corrected himself: It was in fact 1.1 million pigs. The difference might seem like just a rounding error, he told me, but if you ever had to kill an "extra" hundred thousand pigs and dispose of their bodies in bulldozed pits, you'd remember the difference as significant.

re: the US agriculture industry: " This puts us in the odd position of consuming fossil fuels --geologically one of the rarest and most useful resources ever discovered-- to provide a substitute for dirt --the cheapest and most widely available agricultural input imaginable.

People tend to assume that organic farming and sustainability go hand in hand. But that's not necessarily the case - and it hasn't been for most of history. While going organic has some big advantages, even today most organic farmers still rely on the plow - the chief culprit in the this story. Why? Because it provides cheap, reliable weed suppression." David Montgomery - Growing a Revolution

With rare exceptions, the fields of all countries have been made to bear their crops without the least reference to the interests of future generations.

Plants themselves deliver glyphosate to their microbial helpers, as was found in soybeans that exuded the herbicide from their roots for several weeks after being sprayed. Delivering a broad-spectrum antibiotic to the rhizosphere—the home for microbial communities that provide nutrients to plants and keep pathogens at bay—is not exactly a recipe for improving soil health, crop health, or the nutrient density of food.

Across the board, dietary advice typically focuses on what and how much to eat, with remarkably little attention paid to how farming practices influence the nutritional quality of food and whether the "right foods" pack the nutrients they once had.

Jerseys were for people who were afraid to milk Holsteins and too ashamed to milk goats.

After all the fertile land in the immediate neighbourhood of the first settlers were cultivated, if capital and population increased, more food would be required, and it could only be procured from land not so advantageously situated.

He claimed that he would rather buy stocks under these conditions, because pigs did not pay a dividend. Plus, you have to feed pigs. Mr.

So, how agreeable, perhaps, to be a pastoralist. Just be that—have that longing right in front of you, continuously addressed. To be forever lost and found.

In Europe, corn (wheat) is the major crop, and a staple part of our diets

For three thousand years, the Egyptians held to a cyclical view that year after year proved itself to be true: the seasons came and went, life in the farms and villages remained basically the same, and the idea of progress was as foreign as soft-serve ice cream.

God made the world, but the Dutch made Holland.

Organic food production has existed for thousands of years (since the beginning of agriculture) and it will continue as long as humans live on the planet.