Without food, we cannot survive, and that is why issues that affect the food industry are so important.
I think the only real knowledge I had before I went to Iowa was what I learned from 'Food Inc'. But once I got there and developed these extensive relationships with the farmers, I realized that we're basically made of corn.
There is no conflict between a better meal and a better world.
The Green Revolution is neither.
How we eat can change the world
Food security is not only a matter of humanitarian assistance and agricultural development; it is a matter of national security, peace and stability.
The farmers markets were another step to giving people an opportunity to take more power over their own lives-and also to provide another outlet for organic produce. That is important because the production and distribution of food is increasingly being monopolized and controlled by large corporate structures, large financial structures.
To be interested in food but not in food production is clearly absurd.
Whether we consciously realize it or not, the biodiversity with which we are most familiar, and the biodiversity with which we have most intimate historical, cultural and biological connections, is that associated with food plants.
Food sovereignty... is most of all characterized by it’s conversations around how to end hunger and poverty.
The reasons for food insecurity are many and varied. But part of the problem is the global farming systems.
With the growth of both urbanization and globalization, consumers are becoming increasingly disconnected from their food.
Industrial agriculture freed many people to pursue lives their parents and grandparents could never have. It made America modern.
How we grow food has enormous effects on the environment - climate change as well as pollution of air, water, and soil.
Think about the systems at McDonald's. It's a very mechanized world, where you take out a highly processed patty.
I am disappointed because nobody is talking about food and agriculture. They're talking about the diets of children, but they're talking about Band-Aids. We're not seeing a vision.
The world's environment can no longer handle beef.
Right now my favorite book is 'Omnivores Dilemma.'
Factory farming, of course, does not cause all the world's problems, but is is remarkable just how many of them intersect there.
Many countries have food safety systems from farm to table. Everybody involved in the food supply is required to follow standard food safety procedures. You would think that everyone involved with food would not want people to get sick from it.
We need the humbleness and clarity to see that our food, while benefitting from technological advances, has benefitted even more from free ecological resources: Cheap energy, lots of water everywhere, and a stable climate.
I've always had a strong interest in how food is produced and in knowing where it comes from.
The whole problem of industrial agriculture is putting all of your eggs in one basket. We need to diversify our food chains as well as our fields so that when some of them fail, we can still eat.
Once the Government Accountability Office did a review of food safety systems in other countries and found many things about those food safety systems that were better than ours [American].
The reductionist measure of yield is to agriculture systems, what GDP is to economic systems. It is time to move from measuring yield of commodities, to health and well-being of ecosystems and communities. Industrial agriculture has its roots in war. Ecological agriculture allows us to make peace with the earth, soil and the society.
