Agribusiness Quotes

• Thanks to farm subsidies, the fine collaboration between agribusiness and Congress, soy, corn and cattle became king. And chicken soon joined them on the throne. It was during this period that the cycle of dietary and planetary destruction began, the thing we're only realizing just now.

  Mark Bittman

  Kings, Corn, Collaboration

  74 Copy quote

• 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

  Moving, Agriculture, Important

  "PM's McKinsey Quarterly Interview". Interview with Rajat K. Gupta, archivepmo.nic.in. 2005.

  25 Copy quote

  Show source

• We are, quite literally, gambling with the future of our planet- for the sake of hamburgers

  Peter Singer

  Gambling, Hamburgers, Sake

  60 Copy quote

• It is only by understanding the cultural complexity and largeness of the concept of agriculture that we can see the threatening diminishments implied by the term 'agribusiness.'

  Wendell Berry

  Agriculture, Understanding, Threatening

  Wendell Berry (2015). “The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture”, p.71, Counterpoint

  24 Copy quote

  Show source

• Our food chain is in crisis. Big agribusiness has made profits more important than your health—more important than the environment—more important than your right to know how your food is produced. But beneath the surface, a revolution is growing.

  John Robbins

  Important, Growing, Revolution

  John Robbins, Ocean Robbins (2013). “Voices of the Food Revolution: You Can Heal Your Body and Your World with Food!”, p.13, Conari Press

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• The poorest of families, the poorest of children, are subsidizing the growth of the largest agribusinesses in the world. I think it’s time we recognized that in free trade the poor farmer, the small farmer, is ending up having to pay royalties to the Monsantos of the world.

  Vandana Shiva

  Children, Thinking, Growth

  Interview with David Barsamian, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. September 29, 2011.

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• Forests and meat animals compete for the same land. The prodigious appetite of the affluent nations for meat means that agribusiness can pay more than those who want to preserve or restore the forest. We are, quite literally, gambling with the future of our planet – for the sake of hamburgers

  Peter Singer

  Mean, Animal, Gambling

  10 Copy quote

• Colombia was a big wheat producer in the 1950's. That was eliminated by what sounds like a nice plan, called "Food for Peace. " It's a plan by which US taxpayers subsidized US agribusiness to send food to poor countries. This, of course, destroyed the domestic agricultural markets of these countries, opening these markets to US agribusiness.

  Noam Chomsky

  Country, Nice, Sound

  Source: www.madre.org

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Undercover investigations threw back the curtain on the systemic exploitation of animals on factory farms. The response by agribusiness interests has been to back laws that ban animal advocates from taking pictures or videos at these facilities, and ban the media from publishing any that are taken. The laws also make it a crime for animal advocates to seek employment at animal enterprises without disclosing their intentions.

  Wayne Pacelle

  Taken, Animal, Media

  "Making Progress Against Animal Cruelty: An interview with Wayne Pacelle". Interview with Karen Dawn, progressive.org. July 20, 2016.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Our lack of community is intensely painful. A TV talk show is not community. A couple of hours in a church pew each Sabbath is not community. A multinational corporation is neither a human nor a community, and in the sweatshops, defiled agribusiness fields, genetic mutation labs, ecological dead zones, the inhumanity is showing. Without genuine spiritual community, life becomes a struggle so lonely and grim that even Hillary Clinton has admitted "it takes a village".

  David James Duncan

  Spiritual, Lonely, Couple

  David James Duncan (2007). “God Laughs & Plays: Churchless Sermons in Response to the Preachments of the Fundamentalist Right”, p.99, Triad Institute, Inc.

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• Agribusinesses should never dictate the quality of school meals.

  Jared Polis

  School, Quality, Meals

  "Rep. Polis gets crusty about pizza" by Patrick Gavin, www.politico.com. May 15, 2012.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• We're still promoting stupid wasteful behavior in agribusiness - everything from ethanol production for cars to genetically modified crops. In commerce just about everything we do politically is in the service of WalMart and the systems tied to it. In transportation, we could, for instance, have compelled General Motors to produce railroad rolling stock as a condition of their bail-out, but we didn't do that. Instead, we're chasing the phantom of electric cars - and, believe me, we are going to be mortally disappointed how that works out.

  James Howard Kunstler

  Stupid, Believe, Work Out

  Source: www.terrain.org

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• The enclosure of the biological and intellectual commons in this way is a real threat to the future of people everywhere because it creates a situation where common practices that have been part of people's lives for generations become monopolies of a handful of pharmaceutical, agribusiness and agrichemical corporations. People then become incapable of looking after their own needs.

  Vandana Shiva

  Real, Practice, People

  Source: scottlondon.com

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Agribusiness could provide an opportunity for joint Israeli-Palestinian projects, spurred on by Israeli technical expertise in this field.

  Edgar Bronfman, Sr.

  Opportunity, Fields, Joints

  "The Regional Economics of Peace" by Edgar M. Bronfman, www.huffingtonpost.com. March 18, 2010.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• There are more obese people in the world than starving people. As China and India start to develop our eating habits - and not by accident but because agribusiness is going over there and imposing our habits on them - if the population doesn't increase at all, we'll have to raise twice as many animals as we do.

  Jonathan Safran Foer

  Animal, People, World

  6 Copy quote

• The idea that a relatively fixed group of privileged people might shape the economy and government for their own benefit goes against the American grain. Nevertheless, the owners and top-level managers in large income-producing properties are far and away the dominant power figures in the United States. Their corporations, banks, and agribusinesses come together as a corporate community that dominates the federal government in Washington. Their real estate, construction, and land development companies form growth coalitions that dominate most local governments.

  G. William Domhoff

  Real, Land, Ideas

  7 Copy quote

• Haitian rice farmers are quite efficient, but they can't compete with U.S. agribusiness that relies on a huge government subsidy, thanks to Ronald Reagan's free market enthusiasms.

  Noam Chomsky

  Government, Subsidies, Enthusiasm

  6 Copy quote

• The cleanup costs of polluting a river, injecting pesticides into the ground water, or putting noxious gases into the air have not been figured into the cost of the manufacturing or agribusiness that put them there in the first place. Historically, the economic incentive has been to pollute.

  Gloria Steinem

  Air, Rivers, Water

  Gloria Steinem (2012). “Moving Beyond Words: Essays on Age, Rage, Sex, Power, Money, Muscles: Breaking the Boundaries of Gender”, p.421, Open Road Media

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• The US does not observe the free-trade principles. Those are for the weak. So agribusiness is highly subsidized and pours product into Mexico and drives out Mexican farmers. Maybe they have to go into the cities, and they don't have jobs to support them, so they flee across the border.

  Noam Chomsky

  Jobs, Cities, Mexican

  Source: www.truth-out.org

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Parental anxieties: A timeline. Pre-1800s: Potato famine, death of entire villages. 1900s: Trying to keep dad's job through depression so entire family does not starve or have to sell off children to agribusiness. 2000: Infringement of Parenthood on sense of Personhood.

  Sandra Tsing Loh

  Jobs, Dad, Children

  7 Copy quote