Wendell Berry Quotes

[On her Freedom Farm Cooperative:] If you give a hungry man food, he will eat it. [But] if you give him land, he will grow his own food.

To put it bluntly, we now need to reverse course. We need more highly skilled small farmers in more places all across America - not as a matter of nostalgia for the agrarian past but as a matter of national security. For nations that lose the ability to substantially feed themselves will find themselves as gravely compromised in their international dealings as nations that depend on foreign sources of oil presently do. But while there are alternatives to oil, there are no alternatives to food.

Maybe a person's time would be as well spent raising food as raising money to buy food.

I have always said there is only one thing that can bring our nation down - our dependence on foreign countries for food and energy. Agriculture is the backbone of our economy.

A safe, affordable and plentiful supply of food is a national security issue.

Designing our own agriculture policy will mean we can put behind us the quotas and regulations that have held back U.K. output during our years in the E.U.

Each country has to decide how to best engage their own citizens and their own policy environment to ensure they can produce the food they need.

I want for us to be self-sustained so we can export. The government has a responsibility to have agricultural programs so people are able to grow their own food.

Ere long the most valuable of all arts will be the art of deriving a comfortable subsistence from the smallest area of soil. No community where every member possesses the art can ever be the victim of oppression in any of its forms.

Anybody interested in solving, rather than profiting from, the problems of food production and distribution will see that in the long run the safest food supply is a local food supply, not a supply that is dependent on a global economy. Nations and regions within nations must be left free and should be encouraged to develop the local food economies that best suit local needs and local conditions.

A country needs to be able to feed itself, fuel itself, and fight for itself.

The nation that buys commands, the nation that sells serves; it is necessary to balance trade in order to ensure freedom; the country that wants to die sells only to one country , and the country that wants to survive sells to more than one.

The government has no business knowing how much money we make and how we made it. It's none of their business. And that's why I believe that manufacturing is critical. If we can't feed ourselves, fuel ourselves and fight for ourselves, we can't be free.

I think we can be reasonably confident that if the American population had the slightest idea of what is being done in their name, they would be utterly appalled.

Every sovereign country has the right to control its borders, and should. The idea that anyone would sneak over our borders without proper documentation to me is absolutely abhorrent.

In the last analysis civilization is based upon the food supply.

There are a lot of great organizations who are fighting for food and environmental safety in this country. The Environmental Working Group, Just Label It, Food Democracy Now, and the Center for Food Safety, to name a few.

Some think that Russia should become a kind of a U.S. province, where it should supply natural resources to the United States and the rest of the world. But these people ignore one very important thing: The Russian people will never agree to this scenario. Russia is ultimately a self-sufficient country.

We are fat and sick and dying because we have handed a basic, fundamental and intimate function of life over to corporations. We choose to value our nourishment so little that we entrust it to strangers. This is insanity. Feed yourselves. Feed your loved ones. And for God's sake feed your children.

Food consists not just in piles of chemicals; it also comprises a set of social and ecological relationships, reaching back to the land and outward to other people.

People need to feed themselves, next they need to feed their own communities.

It's a moral imperative, it's an economic imperative, and it is a security imperative. For we've seen how spikes in food prices can plunge millions into poverty, which, in turn, can spark riots that cost lives, and can lead to instability. And this danger will only grow if a surging global population isn't matched by surging food production. So reducing malnutrition and hunger around the world advances international peace and security - and that includes the national security of the United States.

There's this about a farm: when the market's good there's money, and when it's bad there's food.

The State Department said the countries that are most stealing our best ideas also are our best allies.

The countries that have risen and separated out as a result of the collapse of the Soviet Union are, on the whole, following freer economic policies. Most of these states have freer government and less restrictions on trade.