Farmers Quotes - Page 30

• Since chemical fertilizer burns out the soil organic matter, other farmers struggle with tilth, water retention, and basic soil nutrients. The soil gets harder and harder every year as the chemicals burn out the organic matter, which gives the soil its sponginess. One pound of organic matter holds four pounds of water. The best drought protection any farmer can acquire is more soil organic matter.

  Joel Salatin

  Struggle, Years, Land

  5 Copy quote

• It's as if the whole notion of growing soil is something only lunatics would think about. But why not grow soil? Does anything make more sense than growing soil? Isn't that more important than tractors, trucks, silos, barns, county fairs and country music? Of course it is. And yet to the lion's share of American farmers, the very notion of growing soil is just plain silly.

  Joel Salatin

  Country, Silly, Thinking

  8 Copy quote

• Dispossessed peasants slash-and-burn their way into the rain forests of Latin America, hungry nomads turn their herds out into fragile African rangeland, reducing it to desert, and small farmers in India and the Philippines cultivate steep slopes, exposing them to the erosive powers of rain. Perhaps half the world's billion-plus absolute poor are caught in a downward spiral of ecological and economic impoverishment. In desperation, they knowingly abuse the land, salvaging the present by savaging the future.

  Alan Thein Durning

  Latin, Rain, Land

  4 Copy quote

• As a population, if a large number of people make even small moves to eat less meat and more plant-based foods, the livestock industry will shrink. Over time, farmers will find other crops to support their livelihoods. Through such collective awakening we can make a difference in our world.

  Nhat Hanh

  Motivational, Moving, Differences

  4 Copy quote

• The farmers can be thankful. Didn't the Farm Board decide in Washington last week that they could have cheaper interest? All the farmers have to do now is to find something new to put up as security.

  Will Rogers

  Agriculture, Being Thankful, Boards

  Will Rogers (1978). “Will Rogers' Daily Telegrams: The Coolidge years, 1926-1929”, Will Rogers Heritage Trust

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The good people of Dakota offered to give Calvin Coolidge a farm if he would live on it. I wouldn't advise you to give those people too much credit for generosity. There is not a farmer in any State in the West that wouldn't be glad to give him a farm if he will paint it, fix up the fences and keep up the series of mortgages that are on it. And if you think Coolidge ain't smart, you just watch him not take it.

  Will Rogers

  Real, Smart, Thinking

  4 Copy quote

• The whole financial structure of Wall Street seems to rise or fall on the mere fact that the Federal Reserve Bank raises or lowers the amount of interest. Any business that can't survive a one percent change must be skating on thin ice.
  Why even the poor farmer took a raise of another ten percent just to get a loan from the bank, and nobody from the government paid any attention. But you let Wall Street have a nightmare and the whole country has to help to get them back into bed again.

  Will Rogers

  Country, Wall, Fall

  4 Copy quote

• Coolidge has the best idea on this farm relief. He said, 'Farmers, you are in a hole. I can't help you, but I will get in with you.' He did. That made it fine so the farmers were satisfied as long as Coolidge was going to get in with them.

  Will Rogers

  Ideas, Agriculture, Long

  Will Rogers (1983). “Radio broadcasts of Will Rogers”, Oklahoma State Univ Pr

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• It rained in the Middle West. Farmers are learning that the relief they get from the sky beats what they get from Washington.

  Will Rogers

  Sky, Agriculture, Relief

  Will Rogers, Bryan B. Sterling (1995). “Will Rogers Speaks: Over 1,000 Timeless Quotations for Public Speakers (writers, Politicians, Comedians, Browsers ...)”, M Evans & Company

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Agriculture is the greatest and fundamentally the most important of our industries. The cities are but the branches of the tree of national life, the roots of which go deeply into the land. We all flourish or decline with the farmer.

  Bernard Baruch

  Land, Cities, Roots

  9 Copy quote

• By outlawing Solidarity, a free trade organization to which an overwhelming majority of Polish workers and farmers belong, they have made it clear that they never had any intention of restoring one of the most elemental human rights the right to belong to a free trade union.

  Ronald Reagan

  Rights, Organization, Majority

  United States. President (1981-1989 : Reagan), United States. President (1981-1989 : Reagan)., Ronald Reagan, United States. Office of the Federal Register (1983). “Ronald Reagan”

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• A man picks a wife about the same way an apple picks a farmer.

  Evan Esar

  Men, Apples, Wife

  Evan Esar (1978). “The Comic Encyclopedia: A Library of the Literature and History of Humor Containing Thousands of Gags, Sayings, and Stories”, Doubleday Books

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Soil is a living ecosystem and is a farmer's most precious asset. A farmer's productive capacity is directly related to the health of his or her soil.

  Howard Warren Buffett

  Ecosystems, Soil, Assets

  6 Copy quote

• Acumen Fund's patient capital investment in Western Seed is intended to enhance the food security and economic independence of Kenya's smallholder farmers.

  Jacqueline Novogratz

  Independence, Acumen, Kenya

  7 Copy quote

• The American farmer, whose holdings were not so extensive as those of the grandee nor so tiny as those of the peasant, whose psychology was Protestant and bourgeois, and whose politics were petty-capitalist rather than traditionalist, had no reason to share the social outlook of the rural classes of Europe. In Europe land was limited and dear, while labor was abundant and relatively cheap; in America the ratio between land and labor was inverted.

  Richard Hofstadter

  Europe, Land, Class

  "The Age of Reform: from Bryan to F.D.R". Book by Richard Hofstadter, Chapter I, part II, p. 44, 1955.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is too narrow an understanding of production which confines it merely to the making of things. Production includes not merely the making of things, but the bringing of them to the consumer. The merchant or storekeeper is thus as truly a producer as is the manufacturer, or farmer, and his stock or capital is as much devoted to production as is theirs.

  Henry George

  Understanding, Producers, Storekeeper

  Henry George (2006). “Progress and Poverty”, p.37, Cosimo, Inc.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• A real farmer. He spent his childhood in the wheat, and his marriage in the hay.

  Mae West

  Real, Childhood, Hay

  "Fictional character: Marlo Manners". "Sextette", www.imdb.com. 1978.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I now say that the world has the technology - either available or well advanced in the research pipeline - to feed on a sustainable basis a population of 10 billion people. The more pertinent question today is whether farmers and ranchers will be permitted to use this new technology? While the affluent nations can certainly afford to adopt ultra low-risk positions, and pay more for food produced by the so-called "organic" methods, the one billion chronically undernourished people of the low income, food-deficit nations cannot.

  Norman Borlaug

  Technology, Pertinent Questions, People

  Norman Borlaug's 30th anniversary lecture at the Norwegian Nobel Institute in Oslo (September 8, 2000), as quoted in Ronald Bailey "Global Warming and Other Eco Myths: How the Environmental Movement Uses False Science to Scare Us to Death" (p. 59), 2002.

  53 Copy quote

  Show source

• I do think that there is a big difference between family farms and agri-business, and one of the distressing things that I think has occurred is with consolidation of farm lands. You've seen large agri-businesses benefit from enormous profits from existing farm programs, and I think we should be focusing most of those programs on those family farmers.

  Barack Obama

  Thinking, Land, Differences

  4 Copy quote

• Fame is a fickle food Upon a shifting plate, Whose table once a Guest, but not The second time, is set. Whose crumbs the crows inspect, And with ironic caw Flap past it to the Farmer's corn; Men eat of it and die.

  Emily Dickinson

  Food, Past, Men

  Emily Dickinson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Emily Dickinson (Illustrated)”, p.1939, Delphi Classics

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• The pious farmer, who ne'er misses pray'rs, With patience suffers unexpected rain; He blesses Heav'n for what its bounty spares, And sees, resign'd, a crop of blighted grain. But, spite of sermons, farmers would blaspheme, If a star fell to set their thatch on flame.

  Mary Wortley Montagu

  Stars, Rain, Flames

  Mary Wortley Montagu, James Archibald Stuart-Wortley-Mackenzie Wharncliffe (1837). “The Letters and Works: In Three Volumes”, p.425

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• If we want to keep farmers in business, it's time for all of us, ordinary citizens and policy makers alike, to begin learning how that might be done. Sharing the Harvest is a great place to start.

  Joan Dye Gussow

  Ordinary, Citizens, Done

  4 Copy quote

• The writer is a person who is standing apart, like the cheese in 'The Farmer in the Dell' standing there alone but deciding to take a few notes. You’re outside, but you can see things up close through your binoculars. Your job is to present clearly your viewpoint, your line of vision. Your job is to see people as they really are, and to do this, you have to know who you are in the most compassionate possible sense. Then you can recognize others.

  Anne Lamott

  Jobs, People, Vision

  Anne Lamott (2007). “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life”, p.97, Anchor

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Now that my wine has been served in the White House, why not me? Who could talk to farmers better than I? Somebody even asked me the other day if I had anything in my platform about taxes. 'Hell yes,' I said. 'Great state. But I wouldn't want to live there.'

  Pat Paulsen

  Wine, White, House

  21 Copy quote

• Like all real treasures of the mind, perception can be split into infinitely small fractions without losing its quality. The weeds in a city lot convey the same lesson as the redwoods; the farmer may see in his cow-pasture what may not be vouchsafed to the scientist adventuring in the South Seas.

  Aldo Leopold

  Weed, Real, Sea

  Aldo Leopold (1968). “A Sand County Almanac: And Sketches Here and There”, p.155, Oxford University Press

  10 Copy quote

  Show source