Thoughts for Thinkers

These pearls we found during the year. They are yours to use and enjoy...

Live for tomorrow forever

“Live as though you were going to die tomorrow.
Farm as though you were going to live forever.”

19th century English saying


Civilisation and soil


“There is an indispensable agricultural link between the superstructure of a complex civilisation and the soil… The chief product of the farm is the persons who constitute that link and they are the most important agricultural resource for our national health and good character.”

Johnson D. Hill, Roots In The Soil



To Lead

“Governments cannot lead.
They can only follow.

Environmental Groups cannot lead.
They can only react.

Only the People can lead.

The Soil Carbon Manifesto


The earth lives

“In our time, the depersonalised, lifeless concept of soil still predominates… [There is] a need to revive the long-dormant feeling [that] the earth lives in and through human agriculture… Human agriculture is part of the life of the earth… is, in short, a natural activity, properly emergent within many of the ecosystems in which the human species is found. To speak this way is to take the earth, the soils, the waters as living, if not animated, and to understand this life is to seek… the spirit of the soil.”

Paul B. Thompson, The Spirit of the Soil


Can’t see for complexity

“The complexity of large agricultural systems encourages a reductionist approach to study and management that precludes observation of large-scale effects.”

Robert L. Zimdahl, Agriculture’s Ethical Horizon