Paddy Ashdown Quotes

The welfare of the farmer is vital to that of the whole country.

I have had the good fortune to see how my articles have directly benefited some farmers and helped build markets for their products in a way that preserves land from development. That makes me a hopeless optimist.

When coffee prices fall below production costs, farmers are often forced off their land, and they lose their homes, everything. With fair trade, farmers get a fair price for their harvest with a guaranteed minimum, so they can invest in their crops.

Empowering small farmers to increase productivity, improve crop quality and access reliable markets is critical to addressing global hunger and poverty.

If African farmers can use improved seeds and better practices to grow more crops and get them to market, then millions of families can earn themselves a better living and a better life.

We all flourish or decline with the farmer.

Farmers are farmers in the first place because they have the deep-seated instinct to raise crops, not to cut them back, not to leave the land unproductive.

Let’s help farmers when they need it; let’s not, when they don’t.

Farmer! Yesterday you could only work the land. Today, under the republic you can become an agricultural engineer!

Food should cost more …. The farmer needs to be paid enough money for his food so that he can send his children to school and college.

When I was agriculture minister, we drafted specific policies to tackle the agrarian crisis.

Without the wholehearted involvement of farmers, particularly of young as well as women farmers, it will be impossible to implement a Food Entitlements Act in an era of increasing price volatility in the international market.

On the Agriculture Committee, I will be an ardent and strong champion for our farmers to ensure that they are treated fairly, particularly in regards to how their products are priced.

Now listen, the one thing about agriculture is we've lost our manufacturing, we've lost a great deal of jobs overseas, lots of our industry. The last thing in the world we need to do is lose the ability to produce our food.

Agrarian reform should not merely subdivide misery, it must raise living standards. Ownership raises the farmer from his, but productivity will keep him on his feet.

Like its agriculture, Africa's markets are highly under-capitalized and inefficient. We know from our work around the continent that transaction costs of reaching the market, and the risks of transacting in rural, agriculture markets, are extremely high. In fact, only one third of agricultural output produced in Africa even reaches the market.

My real emphasis is on the farmers who are taking care of the land, the farmers who are really thinking about our nourishment.

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

Let us not forget that the cultivation of the earth is the most important labor of man. When tillage begins, other arts will follow. The farmers, therefore, are the founders of civilization.

Establishment at public expense of rural depots for the most improved agricultural machinery, to be lent out to the agricultural population at a rent covering cost and management alone.

We don't pay truckers not to truck, we don't pay miners not to mine and we shouldn't pay farmers not to farm.

The only thing I'd like to see hi [Jimmy Carter] do when he gets to the White House is appoint a working farmer as secretary of agriculture, that's all.

The agricultural interest of the country is connected with every other, and superior in importance to them all.

The small land holders are the most precious part of a state.

A secure and independent agricultural peasantry is the only base on which a people rises.