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“A farmer is a magician who produces money from the mud.”
― Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words

“If the farmer is rich, then so is the nation.”
― Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words

“Rather than heralding a new era of easy living, the Agricultural Revolution left farmers with lives generally more difficult and less satisfying than those of foragers. Hunter-gatherers spent their time in more stimulating and varied ways, and were less in danger of starvation and disease. The Agricultural Revolution certainly enlarged the sum total of food at the disposal of humankind, but the extra food did not translate into a better diet or more leisure. Rather, it translated into population explosions and pampered elites. The average farmer worked harder than the average forager, and got a worse diet in return. The Agricultural Revolution was history’s biggest fraud.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, קיצור תולדות האנושות

“To a farmer dirt is not a waste, it is wealth.”
― Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words

“If the adoption of ploughing increased a village's population from a hundred to 110, which ten people would have volunteered to starve so that the others could go back to the good old time? There was no going back. The trap snapped shut.

The pursuit of an easier life resulted in much hardship, and not for the last time. It happens to us today. How many young college graduates have take demanding jobs in high-powered firms, vowing that they will work hard to earn money that will enable them to retire and pursue their real interests when they are thirty-five? But by the time they reach that age, they have large mortgages, children to school, houses in the suburbs that necessitate at least two cars per family, and a sense that life is not worth living without really good wine and expensive holidays abroad.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

“When humans began cultivating the land, they thought that the extra work this required will pay off. 'Yes, we will have to work harder. But the harvest will be so bountiful! We won't have to worry any more about lean years. Our children will never go to sleep hungry.' It made sense.

If you worked harder, you would have a better life. That was the plan.

The first part of the plan went smoothly. People indeed worked harder. But people did not foresee that the number of children would increase, meaning that the extra wheat would have to be shared between more children.

Neither did the early farmers understand that feeding children with more porridge and less breast milk would weaken their immune system, and that permanent settlements would be hotbeds for infectious diseases.

They did not foresee that by increasing their dependence on a single source of food, they were actually exposing themselves even more to the depredations of drought. Nor did the farmers foresee that in good years their bulging granaries would tempt thieves and enemies, compelling them to start building walls and doing guard duty.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, קיצור תולדות האנושות

“History is a treadmill turned by rising human numbers. Today GM crops are being marketed as the only means of avoiding mass starvation. They are unlikely to improve the lives of peasant farmers ; but they may well enable them to survive in greater numbers.”
― John Gray, Perros de paja: Reflexiones sobre los humanos y otros animales

“With the rise of the state all of this was swept away.
For the past five or six millenia, nine-tenths of all the people who ever lived did so as peasants or as members of some other servile caste or class.
With the rise of the state, ordinary men seeking to use nature's bounty had to get someone else's permission and had to pay for it with taxes,
tribute or extra labor. The weapons and techniques of war and organized aggression were taken
away from them and turned over to specialist-soldiers and policemen controlled by military, religious, and civil bureaucrats. For the first time there appeared on earth kings, dictators, high
priests, emperors, prime ministers, presidents, governors, mayors,
generals, admirals, police chiefs, judges, lawyers, and jailers, along
with dungeons, jails, penitentiaries, and concentration camps. Under
the tutelage of the state, human beings learned for the first time
how to bow, grovel, kneel, and kowtow. In many ways the rise of the
state was the descent of the world from freedom to slavery.”
― Marvin Harris, Cannibals and Kings: Origins of Cultures

“Farmers had freed themselves in part from the blind natural forces of storm and insects only to become increasingly the victims of the equally blind forces of market fluctuations. (p. 14)”
― Grant McConnell, Decline of Agrarian Democracy

“There will be zero hunger if every nation will improve its agricultural production, then there will be plenty of food for all people.”
― Lailah Gifty Akita

“Every farm machine is a spoon that feeds the world's hunger.”
― Bhupendra Sagore

“During the initial agricultural -revolution-, people began to cultivate cereals, rice and other plants. They settled into permanent dwellings to tend crops and led more sedentary lifestyles. Some early agriculturalists decreased the breadth of their diet, incorporated more carbohydrates and lived in larger communities, where diseases could spread more easily.”
― Kimberly A. Plomp, Palaeopathology and Evolutionary Medicine: An Integrated Approach

“The new way of life called for a discipline and a succession of duties that contrasted with the freedom of the gatherers and hunters... The domesticating of plants and animals was a two-way process.”
― Geoffrey Blainey, A Short History of the World

“The future of farming isn't just about growing food—it's about growing a mindset that nurtures the future, one harvest at a time.”
― Mike Smart

“The future of food isn't in distant fields or corporate warehouses—it's in every home, every garden, and every community that takes control of its own food security.”
― Mike Smart