Our task is to build cultural fortresses to protect our emerging nativeness. They must be strong enough to hold at bay the powers of consumerism, the powers of greed and envy and pride. One of the most effective ways for this to come about would be for our universities to assume the awesome responsibility to both validate and educate those who want to be homecomers -- not necessarily to go home but to go someplace and dig in and begin the long search and experiment to become native.
Wes JacksonIt is doubtful that the dissection of living animals and plants could be done by those who believe them to be holy. A pantheist would not view trees as so many board feet in the manner a Christian would. A pantheist would be less likely to measure the number of acre feet coming over a waterfall than his Christian descendent, centuries later who had become a scientist. That which is sacred would be handled with a certain reverence.
Wes JacksonInstead of trying to understand agriculture in its own terms, acknowledge that agriculture ultimately comes out of nature. Right now agriculture is the No. 1 threat to biodiversity on the planet.
Wes JacksonThe agriculture we seek will act like an ecosystem, feature material recycling and run on the contemporary sunlight of our star.
Wes JacksonAs we search for a less extractive and polluting economic order, so that we may fit agriculture into the economy of a sustainable culture, community becomes the locus and metaphor for both agriculture and culture.
Wes JacksonWhen we conduct agriculture, we are, therefore, altering the ecological arrangement that was responsible for our genesis as a species. I think that this is the reason that this alienation has allowed us to see and regard land mostly as a resource. So we have created a problem for ourselves from the word "go," for land is not a resource any more than humans are resources.
Wes Jackson