Famine was the mark of a maturing agricultural society, the very badge of civilization.

[Y]our agricultural revolution is not an event like the Trojan War, isolated in the distant past and without relevance to your lives today. The work begun by those neolithic farmers in the Near East has been carried forward from one generation to the next without a single break, right into the present moment. It's the foundation of your vast civilization today in exactly the same way that it was the foundation of the very first farming village.

Here are two facts that should not both be true:
- There is sufficient food produced in the world every year to feed every human being on the planet.
- Nearly 800 million people literally go hungry every day, with more than a third of the earth's population -- 2 billion men and women -- malnourished one way or another, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.

Ye rigid Ploughman! bear in mind Your labor is for future hours. Advance! spare not! nor look behind! Plough deep and straight with all your powers!

The economy of the state has changed dramatically. The changing face of agriculture drove out farmers and farm families, which drove off businesses that rely on farm families.

The greatest advances of civilization, whether in architecture or painting, in science and literature, in industry or agriculture, have never come from centralized government