120 Agriculture Quotes to Inspire and Elevate Your Farming Journey
Agriculture is a vital industry that involves the growing and cultivating of plants and the raising of animals for food, fiber, and other products used by humans. Many notable individuals have expressed thoughts and opinions about agriculture throughout history. These quotes often reflect the importance of agriculture in sustaining human life, the hard work and dedication required in farming, and the value of nature and the environment in supporting agricultural practices. The quotes about agriculture provide insights into the significance of this industry and the role it plays in our lives.
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Famous Agriculture Quotes
Agriculture is our wisest pursuit, because it will in the end contribute most to real wealth, good morals, and happiness. — Thomas Jefferson
Everything else can wait, agriculture can’t. — Norman Borlaug
Agriculture is the #1 source of deforestation. By some estimates it accounts for 80% of the forests chopped down in the tropics. — Ramez Naam
The invention of agriculture caused the human food supply to increase in quantity and deteriorate in quality, but food industrialization multiplied this effect. — Daniel Lieberman
It Is in the Agricultural Sector That the Battle for Long- Term Economic Development Will Be Won or Lost. — Gunnar Myrdal
The experience of ages has shown that a man who works on the land is purer, nobler, higher, and more moral... Agriculture should be at the basis of everything. That's my idea. — Nikolai Gogol
Second to agriculture, humbug is the biggest industry of our age. — Alfred Nobel
The future of our nation depends on our ability to produce food and fiber to sustain the world. — Phil Bredesen
Climate and digitalisation – will bring changes for all, but let there be no doubt: Farming will remain a valued part of our culture and our future. — Ursula von der Leyen
The adoption of agriculture, supposedly our most decisive step toward a better life, was in many ways a catastrophe from which we have never recovered. — Jared Diamond
Bring diversity back to agriculture. That's what made it work in the first place. — David R. Brower
The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings. — Masanobu Fukuoka
We must plant the sea and herd its animals using the sea as farmers instead of hunters. That is what civilization is all about - farming replacing hunting. — Jacques Yves Cousteau
Farming is often viewed as an old-fashioned way of life, but from an evolutionary perspective, it is a recent, unique, and comparatively bizarre way to live. — Daniel Lieberman
You plant, then you cultivate, and finally you harvest. Plant, cultivate, harvest. In today's world, everyone wants to go directly from plant to harvest. — Jeff Olson
Short Agriculture Quotes
- The correlation between poverty and obesity can be traced to agricultural policies and subsidies. — Michael Pollan
- Humans merely share the Earth. We can only protect the land, not own it. — Chief Seattle
- Sustainability is here to stay or we may not be — Niall FitzGerald
- Men who didn’t know how to get on and off a horse would not be much use around a cow outfit. — Larry Mcmurtry
- I came from a dirt farm, now I'm filthy rich. — Larry Holmes
- I’m very concerned that a lot of our land is being taken up with solar farms. — Liz Truss
- Football: A sport that bears the same relation to education that bullfighting does to agriculture. — Elbert Hubbard
- We have nine hungry Rottweilers on the farm. — John Entwistle
- Yes, cider and tinned salmon are the staple diet of the agricultural classes. — Evelyn Waugh
- Steak on the plate went up. Steak on the hoof went down. — Will Rogers
Importance Of Agriculture Quotes
The wealth of south Florida, but even more important, the meaning and significance of south Florida lies in the black muck of the Everglades and the inevitable development of this country to be the great tropic agricultural center of the world. — Marjory Stoneman Douglas
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. — Ashraf Ghani
I know of no pursuit in which more real and important services can be rendered to any country than by improving its agriculture, its breed of useful animals, and other branches of a husbandman's cares. — George Washington
Tax reform and expanded trade are going to be so important to the economy of Illinois, particularly the 11th Congressional District, which is a major manufacturing and a major agricultural district. — Jerry Weller
It is obvious that the greatest and most important service that is required of our agriculture under existing conditions is an enlarged production of the staple food crops. — David F. Houston
Equally important is the lack of cultivable land for farmers, a profound problem when you take into account that Afghanistan has always largely been an agricultural country, and that even before the wars destroyed lands and irrigation canals, only 5 per cent of the land was cultivable. — Khaled Hosseini
Those living in rural areas as well as those with a planning policy remit for those areas have an important responsibility to protect green belt agricultural land for the wider benefit of feeding the UK into the uncertain future that we all face — Phil Harding
We must then build a proper relationship between the richest and the poorest countries based on our desire that they are able to fend for themselves with the investment that is necessary in their agriculture, so that Africa is not a net importer of food, but an exporter of food. — Gordon Brown
Agribusiness and food processing are important parts of modernizing our economy, of modernizing our agriculture and moving into a phase where a more modernized agriculture helps not only farmers but also helps consumers. — Manmohan Singh
Here we have 40 million Russian citizens involved in the sphere of agriculture one way or another. This is very important. — Vladimir Putin
Sustainable Agriculture Quotes
Sustainability is a political choice, not a technical one. It's not a question of whether we can be sustainable, but whether we choose to be — Gary Lawrence
You cannot, for instance, sustainably protect the environment if the majority of the people are still in primitive agriculture leading to the encroachment of forest reserves. — Yoweri Museveni
I want Britain to lead the world in food and farming and to do that we need enough productive agricultural land. — Liz Truss
Agricultural sustainability doesn't depend on agritechnology. To believe it does is to put the emphasis on the wrong bit of 'agriculture.' What sustainability depends on isn't agri- so much as culture. — Raj Patel
If we don't get sustainability right in agriculture first, it won't happen anywhere. — Wes Jackson
As we search for a less extractive and polluting economic order, so that we may fit agriculture into the economy of a sustainable culture, community becomes the locus and metaphor for both agriculture and culture. — Wes Jackson
It is only with local [agriculture] that we can manage the complexity and care that sustainability requires. — Vandana Shiva
I believe we can create a truly humane, sustainable, and health food production system without killing any animals. I imagine a revolution in veganic agriculture in which small farmers grow a variety of vegetables, fruits, grains, and legumes, all fertilized with vegetable sources. — Gene Baur
A sustainable agriculture is one which depletes neither the people nor the land. — Wendell Berry
To make agriculture sustainable, the grower has got to be able to make a profit. — Sam Farr
Organic Agriculture Quotes
An organic farmer is the best peacemaker today, because there is more violence, more death, more destruction, more wars, through a violent industrial agricultural system. And to shift away from that into an agriculture of peace is what organic farming is doing. — Vandana Shiva
Organic farming has been shown to provide major benefits for wildlife and the wider environment. The best that can be said about genetically engineered crops is that they will now be monitored to see how much damage they cause. — Prince Charles
Real climate solutions are ones that steer these interventions to systematically disperse and devolve power and control to the community level, whether through community-controlled renewable energy, local organic agriculture or transit systems genuinely accountable to their users. — Naomi Klein
Agricultural practice served Darwin as the material basis for the elaboration of his theory of Evolution, which explained the natural causation of the adaptation we see in the structure of the organic world. That was a great advance in the knowledge of living nature. — Trofim Lysenko
I was an organizer in the Food, Agricultural and Tobacco Workers Union down in North Carolina. — Al Lewis
Every major food company now has an organic division. There's more capital going into organic agriculture than ever before. — Michael Pollan
What is fetus farming? Simply put, it is the creation and development of a human fetus for the purposes of later killing it for research or for harvesting its organs. — Nathan Deal
Organic agriculture is more about fairness and respect than it is about parts-per-billion of pesticide residues — Jim Hightower
Many organic practices simply make sense, regardless of what overall agricultural system is used. Far from being a quaint throwback to an earlier time, organic agriculture is proving to be a serious contender in modern farming and a more environmentally sustainable system over the long term. — David Suzuki
We are aware that many national farm organizations are putting forth various plans to provide both short- and long-term relief to our nation's agricultural producers. While we believe long-term solutions are essential, the current situation demands a more immediate response. — Mel Carnahan
Animal Agriculture Quotes
It is not larger, cleaner cages that justice demands...but empty cages; not traditional animal agriculture but a complete end to all commerce in the flesh of dead animals; not more humane hunting and trapping, but the total eradication of these barbarous practices. — Tom Regan
Animal agriculture takes up an incredible 70% of all agricultural land, and a whopping 30% of the land surface of the planet. As a result, farmed animals are probably the biggest cause of slashing and burning the world's forests. — Kathy Freston
We would be foolish and silly not to unite with people in the public health sector, the environmental community, [and] unions, to try to challenge corporate agriculture. — Wayne Pacelle
It is simply that in all life on earth as in all good agriculture there are no short-cuts that by-pass Nature and the nature of man himself and animals, trees, rocks and streams. Every attempt at a formula, a short-cut, a panacea, always ends in negation and destruction. — Louis Bromfield
Eventually, humans invented agriculture, which could be understood as a way of turning the natural world into a tool for our use. There's evidence that we have been domesticating crops and animals for at least 15,000 years, adapting ecosystems to our preferred way of life. — Annalee Newitz
The seven things that make up the rainbow of India's development are India's strong and deep rooted family system, Agriculture-Animal development, India's Matru Shakti (women power), Natural Resources (Jal, Jameen, Jungle), Youth power, Vibrant Democracy and Knowledge. — Narendra Modi
The lifeblood of Mercy For Animals is our undercover investigations of animal agriculture. — Nathan Runkle
Animal agriculture makes a 40% greater contribution to global warming than all transportation in the world combined; it is the number one cause of climate change. — Jonathan Safran Foer
There is no 'need' for us to eat meat, dairy or eggs. Indeed, these foods are increasingly linked to various human diseases and animal agriculture is an environmental disaster for the planet. — Gary L. Francione
As an integral part of the Department of Agriculture, the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service monitors our Nation's agriculture to protect against agricultural pests and diseases. — Mike Rogers
Organic Farming Quotes
I quit because I can’t stand seeing kids come to class hungry and needing shoes. I thought I could do more by organizing farm workers than by trying to teach their hungry children. — Dolores Huerta
There are 6.6 billion people on the planet today. With organic farming we could only feed four billion of them. Which two billion would volunteer to die? — Norman Borlaug
Organic farming appealed to me because it involved searching for and discovering nature's pathways, as opposed to the formulaic approach of chemical farming. The appeal of organic farming is boundless; this mountain has no top, this river has no end. — Eliot Coleman
Far from being a “luxury for the rich,” organic farming may turn out to be a necessity not just for the poor, but for everyone. — Raj Patel
We consume the carcasses of creatures of like appetites, passions and organs with our own, and fill the slaughterhouses daily with screams of pain and fear. — Robert Louis Stevenson
Harmony with land is like harmony with a friend; you cannot cherish his right hand and chop off his left. That is to say, you cannot love game and hate predators; you cannot conserve the waters and waste the ranges; you cannot build the forest and mine the farm. The land is one organism. — Aldo Leopold
To forget how to dig the earth and to tend the soil is to forget ourselves. — Mahatma Gandhi
Producing quality compost is the most important job on the organic farm. A lot of the problems I see on farms I visit could be solved by making better compost. — Eliot Coleman
With wrong farming methods, we turn fertile land into desert. Unless we go back to organic farming and save the soil, there is no future. — Jaggi Vasudev
Organic farming is personal. — Dave Carter
People Writing About Agriculture
More Agriculture Quotes
Of course people don't want war. Why should a poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best thing he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? — Hermann Goring
I had a good mind to discontinue permanently the supply of grain to the city, reliance on which had discouraged Italian agriculture, but refrained because some politician would be bound one day to revive the dole as a means of ingratiating himself with the people. — Augustus
I was talking about no nukes, the farm crisis. People said that wasn't stuff that a state auditor was supposed to be talking about. Maybe they were right. — Paul Wellstone
Of all the advantages of farming, the most fundamental and consequential is that more calories allow people to have bigger families, leading to population growth. But larger populations and their effects on human settlement patterns also fostered new kinds of infectious diseases. Without a doubt, these diseases have been and remain the most devastating of the evolutionary mismatches caused by the Agricultural Revolution. — Daniel Lieberman
The green revolution has an entirely different meaning to most people in the affluent nations of the privileged world than to those in the developing nations of the forgotten world. — Norman Borlaug
In Africa, there were few plants willing to be domesticated, and even fewer animals. Much of the land consists of jungle, swamp, desert, or steep-sided plateau, none of which lend themselves to the growing of wheat or rice, or sustaining herds of sheep. Africa's rhinos, gazelles, and giraffes stubbornly refused to be beasts of burden. — Tim Marshall
We Communists have got to string along with the capitalists for a while. We need their agriculture and their technology. But we are going to continue massive military programs. . . (soon) we will be in a position to return to a much more aggressive foreign policy designed to gain the upper-hand. — Leonid Brezhnev
In Old Europe and Ancient Crete, women were respected for their roles in the discovery of agriculture and for inventing the arts of weaving and pottery making. — Carol P. Christ
Just as the science and art of agriculture depend upon chemistry and botany, so the art of education depends upon physiology and psychology. — Edward Thorndike
I have to study politics and war so that my sons can study mathematics, commerce and agriculture, so their sons can study poetry, painting and music. — John Quincy Adams
All my economic ideas as developed over twenty-five years can be summed up in the words: agricultural-industrial federation. All my political ideas boil down to a similar formula: political federation or decentralization. — Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
Brazil makes up fully one-third of South America’s land, is almost as big as the U.S., and its 27 states equal an area bigger than the 28 EU countries combined; but unlike them it lacks the infrastructure to be as rich. A third of Brazil is jungle, where it is painfully expensive, and in some areas illegal, to carve out land fit for habitation. The government allows slash-and-burn farmers to cut down the jungle and then use the land for agriculture. But the soil is so poor that within a few years crop growing is untenable and the farmers move on to cut down more rainforest. — Tim Marshall
The contrast between northern and southern Europe is also at least partially attributable to the fact that the south has fewer coastal plains suitable for agriculture, and has suffered more from drought and natural disasters than the north. The arable land and waterways of the North European Plain which stretches from France to Russia enables crops and other goods to be produced and moved easily. — Tim Marshall
Even as the population doubled from three to six billion, we managed to race ahead with all kinds of technological and scientific events in agriculture - from using more fertilizers to mechanization to advanced plant breeding. — Nina Fedoroff
If you're using first-class land for biofuels, then you're competing with the growing of food. And so you're actually spiking food prices by moving energy production into agriculture. — Bill Gates
Wait a minute! I'm not interested in agriculture. I want the military stuff. During a briefing military stuff in which officials began telling him about missile silos. — Sean William Scott
Agriculture is for living; mind culture is for life. Skills are for shaping material things so that they cater more for the comfort of man; studies are for shaping attitudes, feelings, desires, emotions and impulses of man, so that they may confer more peace, more joy and more fortitude on man. — Sathya Sai Baba
Texas has been hit especially hard this year by a continuing drought, threatening high winds and increasingly destructive range fires. Simply, these conditions have lead to extremely adverse conditions in the agriculture industry. — Michael McCaul
Our farmers and ranchers have never faced as many problems as they do today with drought, range fires, high gas prices and an ever tightening budget on agriculture subsidies. — Michael McCaul
After the First World War the economic problem was no longer one of production. It was the problem of finding markets to get the output of industry and agriculture dispersed and consumed. — John Boyd Orr
When the land is cultivated entirely by the spade and no horses are kept, a cow is kept for every three acres of land. — John Stuart Mill
The standard four food groups are based on American agricultural lobbies. Why do we have a milk group? Because we have a National Dairy Council. Why do we have a meat group? Because we have an extremely powerful meat lobby. — Marion Nestle
I came from Iowa, south central Iowa. It was a very rural area. I saw a lot more hogs growing up than I saw people. — Peggy Whitson
The person who can most easily take up natural agriculture is the one who doesn't have any of the common adult obstructing blocks of desire, philosophy, or religion . . . the person who has the mind and heart of a child. One must simply know nature . . . real nature, not the one we think we know! — Masanobu Fukuoka
We have to bring children into a new relationship to food that connects them to culture and agriculture. — Alice Waters
Beer was the driving force that led nomadic mankind into village life. It was this appetite for beer-making material that led to crop cultivation, permanent settlement and agriculture. — Alan D. Eames
Much of the Greek coastline comprises steep cliffs and there are few coastal plains for agriculture. Inland are more steep cliffs, rivers that will not allow transportation, and few wide, fertile valleys. There is too little good agricultural land for Greece to become a major agricultural exporter, or to develop more than a handful of major urban areas containing highly educated, highly skilled, and technologically advanced populations. Its situation is further exacerbated by its location, with Athens positioned at the tip of the peninsula, almost cut off from land trade with Europe. It is reliant on the Aegean Sea for access to maritime trade in the region — but across that sea lies Turkey, a large potential enemy. Greece spends a vast amount of euros, which it doesn’t have, on defense. There are about 1,400 Greek islands 6,000 if you include various rocks sticking out of the Aegean of which approximately 200 are inhabited. It takes a decent navy just to patrol this territory, never mind one strong enough to defer any attempt to take the islands over. The result is a huge cost in military spending that Greece doesn’t have. During the Cold War, the Americans, and to a lesser extent, the British were content to underwrite some of the military requirements in order to keep the Soviet Union out of the Aegean and the Mediterranean. When the Cold War ended, so did the checks. — Tim Marshall
I'm not talking about losing [agricultural] diversity in the same way that you lose your car keys. I'm talking about losing it in the same way that we lost the dinosaurs: actually losing it, never to be seen again. — Cary Fowler
All my plans in private life; all my pursuits; all my designs, wishes, and thoughts, have this one great object in view: the overthrow of the ruffian Boroughmongers. If I write grammars; if I write on agriculture; if I sow, plant, or deal in seeds; whatever I do has first in view the destruction of those infamous tyrants. — William Cobbett
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