Peter Farb Quotes

The humble American sweet potato helped China double its population to 300 million by 1800.

The commodities of Europe were almost all new to America, and many of those of America were new to Europe. A new set of exchanges, therefore, began and which should naturally have proved as advantageous to the new, as it certainly did to the old continent. The savage injustice of the Europeans rendered an event, which ought to have been beneficial to all, ruinous and destructive to several of those unfortunate countries.

Thus in the Old World also the production of wealth must be increased, but this enterprise is far more difficult in Europe than in America. The population of Europe is much more dense than in the New World: a portion of its lands is exhausted: the great number of political subdivisions, and the multiplicity of tongues, increase enormously the difficulties in the way of business on a great scale. Traditions handed down from the time when men toiled to produce slowly and in small quantities things shaped toward a far distant ideal of perfection are still strong among its people.

All of Europe’s potatoes descended from few tubers sent across the ocean by curious Spaniards… the potato was as important to the modern era as the invention of the steam engine.

The only way in which a European union, embracing Britain but excluding eastern Europe, could become economically healthy would be develop the closest sort of trading relationships either with this hemisphere or with Africa.

The conservation of monarchy in any portion of South America will tend to break the shock of that inevitable divorce by which the New World is about to be divided by the Old... But as to putting it forward, as a project or proposition of ours, that is out of the question. Monarchy in Mexico, and monarchy in Brazil, would cure the evils of universal democracy, and prevent the drawing of the line which I almost dread – America versus Europe. The United States, naturally enough, aim at this division and cherish the democracy which leads to it.

Brazil has cast a firebrand into Europe

All the people of the earth could be fed from the land within a circle of a thousand mile radius [of Kansas City.]

No civilization worthy of the name has every been founded on any agricultural basis other than that of cereals.

We have already broken the link between food production and population. This will soon be complete.

These and other developments in the field of agriculture contain the makings of a new revolution. It is not a violent Red Revolution like that of the Soviets, nor is it a White Revolution like that of the Shah of Iran. I call it the Green Revolution

Without the potato, the balance of European power might never have tilted north.

Civilization depends on our expanding ability to produce food efficiently, which has markedly accelerated thanks to science and technology.

Although the pineapple had been widely disseminated for centuries among the native peoples of South and Central America, it didn't figure in European history until 1493.

The comparison to the old world is something to get excited about. We have the potential for more choice and innovation, and a different regulatory environment that doesn't place as much weight on economic regulations of terms and conditions.

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.

Extreme nationalism and Bolshevism have broken up the old world, a new world is in the making. It is literally true that old things are passing away; all things may become new, granted we have wise, unselfish, and determined guides.

The Industrial Revolution did not spell the end of agriculture, or even the end of food production, in the United States. It just meant that a much smaller percentage of Americans had to work on farms to feed the population.

16,000,000 Americans either defend their rights or suffer repression at the hands of Spain, which, although once the world's greatest empire, is now too weak, with what little is left her, to rule the new hemisphere or even to maintain herself in the old. And shall Europe, the civilized, the merchant, the lover of liberty allow an aged serpent, bent only on satisfying its venomous rage, devour the fairest part of our globe? What! Is Europe deaf to the clamor of her own interests? Has she no eyes to see justice?

It is impossible not to look forward to distant times when our rapid multiplication will expand … and cover the whole northern if not the southern continent.

Corne, which is the staffe of life

This year alone, total world cereal production was estimated to be 2,114 million tons, while total cereal demand was projected at around 1007 million tones, less than half of the cereal production. Ideally, no one should starve or die of hunger in the world we live. Strangely and sadly enough, they do. This is not fair. This is not right.

The early colonists came over with motives no less colonial than the later. They did not come to be assimilated in an American melting pot. They did not come to adopt the culture of the American Indian. They had not the smallest intention of 'giving themselves without reservation' to the new country. They came to get freedom to live as they wanted to. They came to escape from the stifling air and chaos of the old world; they came to make their fortune in a new land.

The Green Revolution is neither.

The Europeans liked to believe it was their valor, superior weapons and culture that won the New World. The real conquistadors were the armies of pathogens that raced on ahead to infect and kill 9 out of 10 of all the Indians of North, Central, and South America. The civilizations of the New World crumbled under the onslaught of invading microbes. Without this invisible army, Cortez and those who followed might never have stood a chance.