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Quotes about U.s. Farmers from the world's top natural health / natural living authors

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"Organic fertilizers that contain these minerals are expensive and difficult to obtain. u.s. farmers manage their costs by using fertilizers that replenish the soil with only nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium (called NPK). With these NPK fertilizers, farmers are able to grow good-looking grains and produce, though the crops remain depleted in all the other necessary minerals. Unfortunately, economics is the driving force behind American agriculture, causing farmers to be more concerned about bushels per acre than the nutrient content of the food they harvest." - Ray D. Strand, What Your Doctor Doesn't Know About Nutritional Medicine May Be Killing You (Get the book.)

"In addition, the 1972 Russian grain purchase encouraged u.s. farmers to plow up marginal land, undermining decades of soil conservation efforts. Today the impact of regional crop failures on global grain prices reflects the close balance between world food supplies and demand. The ongoing availability of surplus North American crops is an issue of global security. Worldwide, ovet two billion acres of virgin land have been plowed and brought into agricultural use since i860. Until the last decades of the twentieth century, clearing new land compensated for loss of agricultural land." - David R. Montgomery, Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations (Get the book.) "Nothing really stands in its way, and as experience grows it is being adopted by many u.s. farmers. For other alternative ideas, like organic practices and biological pest control, it is consumers rather than governments who are driving the process of change in today's global economy without a global society. But governments still have an important role to play. In the developed world, through policies and subsidies they can reshape incentives to promote both small-scale organic farms and no-till practices on large, mechanized farms." - David R. Montgomery, Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations (Get the book.)

"One subsidy guarantees u.s. farmers a minimum of 72.24 cents a pound for their cotton. Because the global market price for cotton in 2004 was 38 cents a pound, U.S. taxpayers paid cotton farmers a lot of money. But taxpayers paid cotton farmers even more money thanks to laws requiring American garment factories to purchase a certain percentage of their cotton from American growers. And, just to ensure that cotton farmers don't lose too much sleep, other programs compensate farmers for weather losses, extend them credit, and help them develop further technologies." - Alex Steffen, Worldchanging: A User's Guide for the 21st Century (Get the book.)

"The number of u.s. farmers plummeted as farm acreage increased and more people moved to the swelling cities. The few farmers left on their land grew cash crops to pay off the loans on their new labor-saving equipment. Mechanization, like slave labor in the South, required doing the same thing everywhere instead of adapting agricultural methods to the land. Droughts in the Gteat Plains occur about every twenty years. In the wet 1940s, doubling the acteage under cultivation increased wheat production fourfold—enough to support record exports to Europe during the war." - David R. Montgomery, Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations (Get the book.)

"About a third of u.s. farmers now use it to speed up milk production. The viruses used to make the growth hormone, of course, are in the milk. The prestigious medical journal, Lancet, reported in 1998 that breast cancer is seven times higher in women with tiny increases in the growth hormone, Insulin-like Growth Factor (IGF-1), which comes from cows injected with rBGH." - Andreas Moritz, Timeless Secrets of Health & Rejuvenation: Unleash The Natural Healing Power That Lies Dormant Within You (Get the book.)

"The food supply now provides an average of 200 calories per person per day from the high fructose corn syrup in soft drinks Corn sweeteners come from corn, obviously, and u.s. farmers grow a lot of this crop. In 2004, they produced 11.8 billion bushels of corn (a bushel is about 35 quarts). Most of this is used to feed animals; only about person per day from the high fructose has made a big difference in the food sup- alone. he food supply now provides an average of 200 calories per 6 percent of the corn produced in the United States is used to make corn sweeteners." - Marion Nestle, What to Eat (Get the book.)

"In keeping with its original purpose to help preserve family farms and rural communities, Pet Promise only obtains its meat from u.s. farmers and ranchers who are committed to eco-friendly, natural, and sustainable practices and who practice the humane treatment of animals. Their pasture-fed beef and free-range chicken come from certified natural producers, such as Coleman Natural Beef and Petaluma Poultry, and your purchase of their quality products helps support family farms that are committed to natural growing methods and a healthy environment that we all can share. www.petpromise." - David Steinman, Safe Trip to Eden: Ten Steps to Save Planet Earth from the Global Warming Meltdown (Get the book.)

"Schell found that by 1954, six years after the discovery of tetracycline's effect on animal growth, u.s. farmers used 490,000 pounds (245 tons) of antibiotic feed additives in livestock feed. In 1977, Jukes boasted that the results produced on farms were so spectacular, especially with pigs, that we could not begin to supply the demand." By 1960, 1.2 million pounds were used annually. By 1985, it was 9 million pounds. Schell felt that by 1985 it was the exception rather than the rule to find a farmer who did not use antibiotic feed additives on his livestock." - Will Allen, The War on Bugs (Get the book.) "Today, most u.s. farmers still don't know the formulas of their pesticides or how they actually work. Corporate science and the bishop both alleged that their formulas and techniques were effective. If farmers believed in them, they used them. And if they seemed to work, farmers continued to use them, no matter where they came from—bishop or alchemist. For the last 160 years corporate chemists have claimed that their products work miracles. And indeed, some of them performed well, even miraculously, but usually only for five to ten years." - Will Allen, The War on Bugs (Get the book.) "The promised market euphoria for GMO food never materialized for u.s. farmers. Instead of gaining world markets as the genetic promoters promised, U.S. corn farmers alone have lost $300 million per year since the late 1990s in reduced sales to the European Union. In 2006 the EU instituted labeling and traceability requirements, which means a potential loss of an additional $4 billion per year in farm-commodity exports.21 Faced with a total loss of international markets, U.S. corn growers turned to ethanol, and soy growers to biodeisel." - Will Allen, The War on Bugs (Get the book.) "In fact, between 1997 and 2004, more than nine thousand u.s. farmers were investigated by Monsanto for patent infringement on proprietary GM seed, and most of those whom Monsanto pursued settled out of court. Almost two hundred farmers and farm businesses during that period were prosecuted and their cases went to court. Many farmers were forced to pay stiff penalties, including court costs, to Monsanto, totaling more than $15 million." - Will Allen, The War on Bugs (Get the book.)

"Here are just a few observations: u.s. farmers who planted Bt corn in 1997 did much better economically than farmers who planted conventional corn, but in 1998 they did worse, largely because so much Biotech nology is helping him protect the land and preserve his family's heritage. "I'm raising a better soybean crop that helps me conserve the topsoil, keep my land productive and help this farm support future generations of my family." ?" - Marion Nestle, Safe Food: Bacteria, Biotechnology, and Bioterrorism (Get the book.)

"A major law firm filed a national class-action lawsuit against Aventis on behalf of all u.s. farmers. By late 2000, even those consumers who had been assuming biotech companies knew what they were doing were losing faith. One-third of Americans were saying that u.s. farmers should not be allowed to grow gene-altered crops at all.45 Meanwhile, fast-food chains, including McDonald's and Burger King, were telling their suppliers they didn't want any more genetically altered potatoes.* A spokesperson for the J. M." - John Robbins, Food Revolution: How your diet can help save your life and our world (Get the book.)

"U.S. farmers had done well during World War I, exporting grain to a Europe that had become a shell-blasted battlefield. By the early 1920s, though, Europeans were able to feed themselves again. Meanwhile, the introduction of the tractor and the mechanization of farming in the United States led quickly to massive overproduction of grain. Unable any longer to pawn off the surplus on Europe, America suffered a crash in grain prices. The farm depression, which preceded the financial depression by half a decade, was a self-reinforcing feedback loop." - James Howard Kunstler, The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century (Get the book.)

"Soybean Association pushed for soybean imports as the "solution." "U.S. farmers need big new export markets. . ." reported one business publication. "India is a perfect match." In the wake of the soy oil takeover, other products soon appeared in the form of "analog dais—soybean extrusions shaped into pellets that look like black gram, green gram, pigeon pea, lentil and kidney bean." SOURCE: Shiva, Vandana. Stolen Harvest (South End Press, 1999)." - Kaayla T. Daniel, PhD, CCN, The Whole Soy Story: The dark side of America's favorite health food (Get the book.)

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