People forget that eating represents their most profound engagement with the natural world. Through agriculture is how we change the world, more than anything else we do.

The garden suggests there might be a place where we can meet nature halfway.

Eating is a political act.

Culture, when it comes to food, is of course a fancy word for your mom.

I mean, we're really making a quantum change in our relationship to the plant world with genetic modification.

Suffering... is not just lots of pain but pain amplified by distinctly human emotions such as regret, self-pity, shame, humiliation, and dread.

American farmers produced 600 more calories per person per day in 2000 than they did in 1980. But some calories got cheaper than others: Since 1980, the price of sweeteners and added fats (most of them derived, respectively, from subsidized corn and subsidized soybeans), dropped 20 percent, while the price of fresh fruits and vegetables increased by 40 percent.