194 Quotes About Farming

I sing once moreThe mild continuous epic of the soil

Many talk of what they can do and what they cannot do, and I fear they miss the vital point. Faith is leaving off the can-ing and cannot-ing, and leaving it all to Christ, for he can do all things, though you can do nothing.

Commercial agriculture can survive within pluralistic American society, as we know it - if the farm is rebuilt on some of the values with which it is popularly associated: conservation, independence, self-reliance, family, and community. To sustain itself, commercial agriculture will have to reorganize its social and economic structure as well as its technological base and production methods in a way that reinforces these values.

We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.

All human livings in industrial society are ultimately based on agricultural production and mineral extraction. One of the ways these processes are transferred upward and outward is through endless cycles of buying and selling. Which is to say that one cannot live in this kind of world without being involved in these cycles, nearly or remotely.

Plants would rather be defecated on than be loved.

As I string, a swift rhythm is played out with my hands, a cadence known only to those who have strung tobacco. To many of the poor workers, the meter and rhythm of stringing tobacco is the only poetry they’ve ever known.

Prune my ambition to the lowly prayerThat I may drive the furrow of my taleStraight, through the lives and dignities I know.

Becoming vegan is the most important and direct change we can immediately make to save the planet and its species.