The human animal is adapted to, and apparently can thrive on, an extraordinary range of different diets, but the Western diet, however you define it, does not seem to be one of them.

Most of the time pests and disease are just nature's way of telling the farmer he's doing something wrong.

In addition to contributing to erosion, pollution, food poisoning, and the dead zone, corn requires huge amounts of fossil fuel - it takes a half gallon of fossil fuel to produce a bushel of corn.

A natural historian is somebody who looks at something in terms of its relationship to the rest of the natural world. You look at things ecologically. When you see a cow on a feedlot, you don't just see a cow; you see a cow that is eating certain food. You follow that food and that food takes you back to a corn field.

Yes, I very much like to have a personal stake in what I’m writing about.

The gardener cultivates wildness, but he does so carefully and respectfully, in full recognition of its mystery.

Eat only until you're 4/5 full. An ancient Japanese injunction.