Farmland Quotes & Sayings

You can go back to tulip bulbs in Holland 400 years ago. The human beings going through combinations of fear and greed and all of that sort of thing, their behavior can lead to bubbles. And it may have had and Internet bubble at one time, you've had a farm bubble, farmland bubble in the Midwest which resulted in all kinds of tragedy in the early '80s. — Howard Warren Buffett

Marketing jingles from every angle lure patrons to turn our backs on our locally owned stores, restaurants, and farms. And nobody considers that unpatriotic. This appears to aggravate Tod Murphy. We have the illusion of consumer freedom, but we've sacrificed our community life for the pleasure of purchasing lots of cheap stuff. Making and moving all that stuff can be so destructive: child labor in foreign lands, acid rain in the Northeast, depleted farmland, communities where the big economic engine is crystal meth. We often have the form of liberty, but not the substance. — Barbara Kingsolver

You could take all the gold that's ever been mined, and it would fill a cube 67 feet in each direction. For what that's worth at current gold prices, you could buy all
not some
all of the farmland in the United States. Plus, you could buy 10 Exxon Mobils, plus have $1 trillion of walking-around money. Or you could have a big cube of metal. Which would you take? Which is going to produce more value? — Warren Buffett

The landscape started hard, sharp black mountains over my shoulder and thirsty young saguaros hugging patchy dirt. Gradually it let go, began to green on me a little. I crossed a river, watched succulents get fatter and farmland start to wave, hoarding the blue above and the few clouds it had to spare.

I knew the route somehow, knew the curves, the directions, the exact way to go. I knew it the way you know the stars are still up in the sky even though white sun obscures them. Everything that had happened before Lukeville and Sonoita began to liquify in memory, feeling more like fiction than personal history. Funerals and pain, girlfriends and mothers, roommates and priests all tumble away with the desert behind me. The only thing that's real is the road I see ahead. The only person in my life is the man sitting silently beside me. The place I'm going is the only place I've ever wanted to go. — Laurie Perez

I go back to a very specific aspect of the Midwest - small towns surrounded by farmland. They make a good stage for what I like to write about, i.e., roads and houses, bridges and rivers and weather and woods, and people to whom strange or interesting things happen, causing problems they must overcome. — Tom Drury

With daylight (it was exactly a week since he last dressed for the office) he found himself passing through farmland over which a light snow had fallen ahead of him, softening, smoothing some of the rudeness, but not enough to hide the truth that nothing was planted. — Douglas Woolf

Your purpose is God's success. You can't pay for what God want to be done. It's God's business; it's his farmland, so when he said he'll provide the rain, don't doubt it! — Israelmore Ayivor

The securest guarantee of the long-term good health of both farmland and city is, I believe, locally produced food. — Wendell Berry

Laws governing pollution tend to move pollutants from one medium to another. So, for example, we scrub SO2 from power plants only to dispose toxic sludge on land. We "clean" water only to disperse toxic-laced solids on farmland or landfills. Pollution control becomes a kind of giant shell game by which we move pollutants between air, water, groundwater, and land. — David W. Orr

When it comes to portfolios, my personal advice is for anyone who can, put money into forestry or farmland. Long term, you would probably never come near their returns in the stock market. In the world that I see, land is golden. — Jeremy Grantham

Human settlements are like living organisms. They must grow, and they will change. But we can decide on the nature of that growth - on the quality and the character of it - and where it ought to go. We don't have to scatter the building blocks of our civic life all over the countryside, destroying our towns and ruining farmland. — James Howard Kunstler

Jungles and grasslands are the logical destinations, and towns and farmland the labyrinths that people have imposed between them sometime in the past. I cherish the green enclaves accidentally left behind. — Edward O. Wilson

This was an adventure. She was alive and awake and in charge, and Devin needed to see that. A kaleidoscope of landscapes passed like a slide show- farmland, sandy pine barrens, cypress ponds. This is what Kate's mother had referred to as the "Wet South, as they'd made their way to Lost Lake the last time. She'd made it sound unexplored and exotic, something untoward and almost fearful. — Sarah Addison Allen

Detroit, the kookiest damn city he'd ever visited. It was the first time he'd seen abandoned homes and decrepit skyscrapers alongside acres of fresh farmland, all part of some inner-city rejuvenation project to turn the industrial revolution inside out. Hell, maybe even white people would come back to the city. — Daryl Gregory

We emphasise the features on satellite maps by adding colours to farmland, urban structures, archaeological sites, vegetation and water. — Sarah Parcak

I have a cottage near Aldeburgh, and from there it's a sturdy two-mile walk across farmland to an empty beach, where I collect hag stones and run around with the dog. I'm a keen walker, and I love Suffolk's big skies. — Diana Quick

In the United States in 1907, a book entitled Three Acres and Liberty seized the imagination of the reading public. The author, Bolton Hall, began by taking for granted the awkwardness of having to work for someone else, and so advised his readers that they could win their freedom by leaving their offices and factories and buying three acres apiece of inexpensive farmland in middle America. This acreage would soon enable them to grow enough food for a family of four and to build a simple but comfortable home, and best of all, relieve them of any need ever again to flatter or negotiate with colleagues and superiors. — Alain De Botton

The average yard is both an ecological and agricultural desert. The prime offender is short-mown grass, which offers no habitat and nothing for people except a place to sit, yet sucks down far more water and chemicals than a comparable amount of farmland. — Toby Hemenway

I think this is the ugliest place I've ever seen. Not just here. The whole state." I hear my parents telling me not to be negative, which is funny because I've always been the happy one. It's Eleanor who was moody. "I used to think that. But then I realized, believe it or not, it's actually beautiful to some people. It must be, because enough people live here, and they can't all think it's ugly." He smiles out at the ugly trees and the ugly farmland and the ugly kids as if he can see Oz. As if he can really, truly see the beauty that's there. In that moment I wish I could see it through his eyes. — Jennifer Niven

The Teen Challenge Training Center on Pennsylvania farmland houses over 200 men in rehab. Other farms and centers have been birthed out of this ministry all over the world. — David Wilkerson

Growing Greener doesn't produce money for farmland preservation or open space preservation. — Ed Rendell

O enchanted land of my childhood, a cultural petri dish from which regularly issues forth greatness. New Jersey, in case you didn't know it, has got beaches. And they're not all crawling with roid-raging trolls with reality shows. I grew up summering on those beaches and they are awesome. Jersey's got farmland, beautiful bedroom communities where that woman from "Real Housewives" who looks like Dr. Zaius does not live nor anyone like her. Even the refineries, the endless cloverleaves of turnpikes and expressway twisting and unknowable patterns over the wetlands that are to me somehow beautiful. To know Jersey is to love her. — Anthony Bourdain

During the 1930s, some of the leading intellectuals in America condemned our economic system and pointed to the centrally planned Soviet economy as a model
all this at a time when literally millions of people were starving to death in the Soviet Union, from a famine in a country with some of the richest farmland in Europe and historically a large exporter of food. — Thomas Sowell

He smiles out at the ugly trees and the ugly farmland and the ugly kids as if he can see Oz. As if he can really, truly, see the beauty that's there. — Jennifer Niven

Growing up around Amish farmland, I enjoyed the opportunity to witness firsthand their love of family, of the domestic arts - sewing, quilting, cooking, baking - as well as seeing them live out their tradition of faith in such a unique way. — Beverly Lewis

I'm from northern Virginia, but I grew up next to the West Virginia border, so it was hills and farmland. We had that sense of adventure you get from growing up around old farmhouses and lazy, rolling hills, you know? — Hilarie Burton

I'm not a violent man."
Joshua, Jerico and Evan choked dramatically and began coughing.
Remy snorted. "And if you believe that, Saria, I've got a sinkhole I can sell you for farmland."
"You're not helping my cause," Drake complained.
"Ignore them. I always do," Saria advised. — Christine Feehan

I had left small-town, rural life for good, and I had no intention of ever returning, not because I didn't like my home but because I had always known that I would leave. Leaving was part of my life romance, part of an idea I had about myself as a person destined for adventure; and as far as I could tell, adventure lay in the urban wilds of Manhattan, not in the farmland of Minnesota. — Siri Hustvedt

Only the Indians respect the forest," Paolo said. "The white people cut it all down." Mato Grosso, he went on, was being transformed into domesticated farmland, much of it dedicated to soybeans. In Brazil alone, the Amazon has, over the last four decades, lost some two hundred and seventy thousand square miles of its original forest cover - an area bigger than France. Despite government efforts to reduce deforestation, in just five months in 2007 as much as two thousand seven hundred square miles were destroyed, a region larger than the state of Delaware. Countless — David Grann

We have serious challenges regarding climate change, unsustainable use of natural resources, water scarcity, loss of biodiversity, forests and farmland. Not to mention the huge inequality still prevailing in several parts of the planet. — Guilherme Leal

Susan Abdallah, a Palestinian, knows the recipe for making a terrorist:
Deprive him of food and water.
Surround his home with the machinery of war.
Attack him with all means at all times, especially at night.
Demolish is home, uproot his farmland, kill his loved ones.
Congratulations: you have created an army of suicide bombers. — Eduardo Galeano

In our current distorted reality, land is often held speculatively without being put to productive use. Because people are able to profit from land and use it inefficiently, sprawl is an issue and farmland is constantly at risk of rezoning, thus forcing up the cost of all farmland.

Land contributions would remove the profit from land speculation and inefficient use, releasing more farmland and also ensuring existing farmland wasn't constantly under the shadow of rezoning. Labour and capital taxes would reduce and thus also farming costs. Overall, farming costs would reduce and farmland would be sustainably available for agriculture. — Martin Adams

I remember him standing next to me at Hoosier Hill, smiling out at the ugly trees and the ugly farmland and the ugly kids as if he could see Oz. 'Believe it or not, it's actually beautiful to some people..' So I decide to see it through his eyes. — Jennifer Niven

support added density. In spite of those challenges, TDR zoning can work. For example, in Montgomery County, adjacent to Washington D.C., TDR zoning has protected 40,000 acres in 20 years, achieving half the area's farmland preservation — Peter Ladner

A lot of people don't know, but New Jersey has, like, 700,000 acres of farmland. — Charlie Puth

The idea that fast reading is good reading is a twentieth-century weed, springing out of the stony farmland cultivated by the computer manufacturers. — Susan Wise Bauer

I grew up in Columbus, Indiana, a kind of industrial and farmland place. — Stephen Sprouse

The question rolled around in Vanessa's mind as she drove down Main Street. The sleepy town of Hyattown had changed very little in twelve years. It was still tucked in the foothills of Maryland's Blue Ridge Mountains, surrounded by rolling farmland and thick woods. Apple orchards and dairy cows encroached as close as the town limits, and here, inside those limits, there were no stoplights, no office buildings, no hum of traffic. — Nora Roberts

I lived in town until I was eight and then I moved nearer the farmland, so I had a mixture. — Stephen Sprouse

So what's Pakistan like? she asked. I told her Pakistan was many things, from seaside to desert to farmland stretched between rivers and canals; I told her that I had driven with my parents and my brother to China on the Karakoram Highway, passing along the bottoms of valleys higher than the tops of the Alps; I told her that alcohol was illegal for Muslims to buy and so I had a Christian bootlegger who delivered booze to my house in a Suzuki pickup. — Mohsin Hamid

But I'll tell you what, there was a lot of farmland between Falls Church and Washington. — Jim Fowler

The refugee card was and continues to be an insult to remind us of the little that refugees get in comparison with what they have really lost. Would a bag of flour compensate for the farmland they once had? Would a bag of sugar make up for the bitter misery those people have always felt after losing their sweet homes to dwell in refugee camps? Would the two bottles of oil make them forget their olive trees, which had been mercilessly uprooted as they themselves were? Or maybe it is simply a declaration that they are temporary refugees who once had the land which, as long as this card is still in their hands, would still be waiting for them to return. Only a shot of sharp pain brought me back to the present. — Refaat Alareer

It is an eccentric and uniquely human approach to resources: like plowing under your farmland to make way for more lawns, or compromising your air quality in exchange for an enormous car. — John Vaillant

We relied on the slave labor of African peoples to build the levees that protected our homes and farmland, to harvest and cook our food, to care for our children, to chop, and hoe, and sweat, and sew, and nurse us back to health, while we aspired to be persons of leisure, or at least to leave the really brutal work to them. — Tim Wise

What people don't think about when they think about New York is this amazing farmland that grows wonderful fruits, vegetables, seafood, game, and fowl just outside of Manhattan. — Daniel Humm

In the distant past, in what might be described as the Golden Days of War, the business of wreaking havoc on your neighbours (these being the only people you could logistically expect to wreak havoc upon) was uncomplicated. You - the King - pointed at the next-door country and said, "I want me one of those!" Your vassals - stalwart fellows selected for heft and musculature rather than brain - said, "Yes, my liege," or sometimes, "What's in it for me?" but broadly speaking they rode off and burned, pillaged, slaughtered and hacked until either you were richer by a few hundred square miles of forest and farmland, or you were rudely arrested by heathens from the other side who wanted a word in your shell-like ear about cross-border aggression. It was a personal thing, and there was little doubt about who was responsible for kicking it off, because that person was to be found in the nicest room of a big stone house wearing a very expensive hat. — Nick Harkaway

Our minds must relax: they will rise better and keener after a rest. Just as you must not force fertile farmland, as uninterrupted productivity will soon exhaust it, so constant effort will sap our mental vigour, while a short period of rest and relaxation will restore our powers. — Seneca.

You may have heard that America doesn't have enough scientists and is in danger of "falling behind" (whatever that means) because of it. Tell this to an academic scientist and watch her laugh. For the last thirty years, the amount of the U.S. annual budget that goes to non-defense related research has been frozen. From a purely budgetary perspective, we don't have too few scientists, we've got far too many, and we keep graduating more each year. America may say that it values science, but it sure as hell doesn't want to pay for it. Within environmental science in particular, we see the crippling effects that come from having been resource-hobbled for decades: degrading farmland, species extinction, progressive deforestation... The list goes on and on. — Hope Jahren

I grew up in suburban New Jersey in a transitional area that was surrounded by farmland that wasn't being cultivated. — James Balog