Agriculture

“Ten acres and a mule.”

“Three acres and a cow.”

“Virginia was in fact a landowning aristocracy, without nobility or merchant class, or any considerable small peasant farming class; and the other Southern colonies, except North Carolina, were on the whole similar to Virginia in these respects.”

“Look up! the wide extended plainIts waves of emerald and gold.”

“When you have decided to purchase a farm, be careful not to buy rashly; do not spare your visits and be not content with a single tour of inspection. The more you go, the more will the place please you, if it be worth your attention. Give heed to the appearance of the neighbourhood, - a flourishing country should show its prosperity. "When you go in, look about, so that, when needs be, you can find your way out."”

“For of all gainful professions, nothing is better, nothing more pleasing, nothing more delightful, nothing better becomes a well-bred man than agriculture.”

“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.”

“Farming as we do it is hunting, and in the sea we act like barbarians.”

“Aristotle, who has taught us most of the wise things we know, never said a wiser thing than that the cultivators of the soil are the class least inclined to sedition and to violent courses.”

“The first farmer was the first man, and all historic nobility rests on possession and use of land.”

“The farmer, the guy getting a sloppy-with-somewhat-processed-grass tail whipped across his face, the fellow squatting planting seeds he kept from last year, the fisherman on a wild and rolling sea… these are my people, my heroes and my role models. These are the builders, the makers. These are the foundation stone people on which my Australia and the US and Canada (yes there are others, but at least I know a little about those) were built, and still actually stand.”

“The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings.”

“We are returned to mystery and the power of cooperating with life—rather than, as so often now, working against it.”

“Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield:How bow'd the woods beneath their sturdy stroke!”

“Farming here often reminds me of the man who when asked to embark upon some rather doubtful business venture replied that if he wanted to gamble he would prefer roulette,…where the chances were only 32 to 1 against him.”

“Ye rigid Ploughmen! bear in mindPlough deep and straight with all your powers!”

“The historical contexts in which plant and animal domestication have taken place should also be taken into account. The domestication of large animals (and plants) gave Europeans a considerable advantage over other regions, as evidenced by their worldwide conquests (Diamond, 2005).”

“Earth is here so kind, that just tickle her with a hoe and she laughs with a harvest.”

“The life of the husbandman,—a life fed by the bounty of earth and sweetened by the airs of heaven.”

“England is the only country in Europe that can boast of having improved its agriculture and the cultivation of its soil beyond that of any other European nation. The condition of English agriculture, compared with that of our own, is like light contrasted with shade.”

“If farming were to be organised like the stock market, a farmer would sell his farm in the morning when it was raining, only to buy it back in the afternoon when the sun came out.”

“All I saw before me were acres of skin… It was like a farmer seeing a fertile field for the first time.”

“Bread and beauty grow best together. Their harmonious integration can make farming not only a business but an art; the land not only a food-factory but an instrument for self-expression, on which each can play music to his own choosing.”

“The status of women up to now has been compared to that of a slave; women have been tied to the home, and only socialism can save them from this. They will only be completely emancipated when we change from small-scale individual farming to collective farming and collective working of the land.”

“The proletarian state must effect the transition to collective farming with extreme caution and only very gradually, by the force of example, without any coercion of the middle peasant.”

“Without competition we would be clinging to the clumsy antiquated processes of farming and manufacture and the methods of business of long ago, and the twentieth would be no further advanced than the eighteenth century.”

“When the land is cultivated entirely by the spade, and no horses are kept, a cow is kept for every three acres of land.”

“Adam, well may we labour, still to dressThis garden, still to tend plant, herb, and flower.”

“France will become again what she should never have ceased to be—an essentially agricultural nation. Like the giant of mythology, she will recover all her strength by contact with the soil.”

“Our rural ancestors, with little blest,With feasts, and off'rings, and a thankful strain.”

“Where grows?—where grows it not? If vain our toil,We ought to blame the culture, not the soil.”

“Here Ceres' gifts in waving prospect stand,And nodding tempt the joyful reaper's hand.”

“The adverse economic events following the First World War turned me toward economics... I learned during my youth how hard it was for farm families to stay solvent. Farm product prices fell abruptly by more than half. Banks went bankrupt and many farmers suffered foreclosures. Was politics or economics to blame? I opted for economics.”

“Most people in the world are poor. If we knew the economy of being poor, we would know much of the economics that really matter. Most of the world's poor people earn their living in agriculture. If we knew the economics of agriculture, we would know much of the economic of being poor.”

“May a clever farmer live at home with you.”

“And he gave it for his opinion, that whosoever could make two ears of corn or two blades of grass to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together.”

“In ancient times, the sacred Plough employ'dAll the vile stores corruption can bestow.”

“Ill husbandry braggethUp gold in his chest.”

“Ill husbandry liethWhere profit to get.”

“He was a very inferior farmer when he first begun,… and he is now fast rising from affluence to poverty.”

“E'en in mid-harvest, while the jocund swainIn dark'ning whirlwinds round the wintry sky.”

“Blessed be agriculture! if one does not have too much of it.”

“When tillage begins, other arts follow. The farmers, therefore, are the founders of human civilization.”

“But let the good old corn adornSend up our thanks to God!”

“Heap high the farmer's wintry hoard!From out her lavish horn!”

“I think the initial reason why I became interested in farming is that I wanted to be outdoors. I've always enjoyed being outdoors. And so, I looked around and when I was at high school, probably 14 or so, my parents through friends arranged for me to be able to go work on farms on the weekend.”

“Agriculture has been and remains a “catastrophe” at all levels, the one which underpins the entire material and spiritual culture of alienation now destroying us. Liberation is impossible without its dissolution.”