“The virgin fertility of our soils and the vast amount of unskilled labor have been more of a curse than a blessing to agriculture. This exhaustive system for cultivation, the destruction of forest, the rapid and almost constant decomposition of organic matter, have made our agricultural problem one requiring more brains than of the North, East or West.”

— George Washington Carver

The Need of Scientific Agriculture in the South (Tuskegee Institute, 1902)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

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George Washington Carver 10

botanist 1864–1943

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“Southern slave owners constantly agitated in the 1850s for state centralization of economic activities that would promote slave agriculture: state-sponsored agricultural surveys, state-subsidized agricultural periodicals, and state investment in railroads (at more than twice the rate of Northern state assistance) which would unite the South and the West and encourage more intensive cotton cultivation. They were, as historian John Majewski remarks, the forerunners of the "southern Progressives of the early twentieth century."”

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Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792) English painter, specialising in portraits

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“The State must help to promote and encourage production. … There must be none of that shrinking from national organization, national production, and national assistance. Germany never made that mistake. Take the most important of national industries, agriculture. Agriculture in the past has been overlooked in this country. It has been neglected, with the result that we have been dependent very largely on lands across the seas for our food. We have realized during the war the perils of this position. … It is in the highest interests of the community that the land in this country should be cultivated to its fullest capacity, and I doubt whether there is a civilized country in the whole world where agriculture has received less attention at the hands of the State. … The cultivation of the land is the basis of national strength and prosperity.”

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“There is much for a young writer to learn from our poorest writers. It is very destructive to burn bad books, almost more destructive than to burn good ones.”

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Source: Sahle-Work Zewde (2021) cited in: " Ethiopian President Sahle-Work Zewde and African Development Bank chief Akinwumi Adesina discuss Ethiopia’s development priorities https://www.afdb.org/en/news-and-events/press-releases/ethiopian-president-sahle-work-zewde-and-african-development-bank-chief-akinwumi-adesina-discuss-ethiopias-development-priorities-48018" in African Development Bank Group, 16 December 2021.

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George Washington Carver 10

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