David R. Montgomery > Quotes

“Small societies are particularly vulnerable to disruption of key lifelines, such as trading relations, or to large perturbations like wars or natural disasters. Larger societies, with more diverse and extensive resources, can rush aid to disaster victims. But the complexity that brings resilience may also impede adaptation and change, producing social inertia that maintains collectively destructive behavior. Consequently, large societies have difficulty adapting to slow change and remain vulnerable to problems that eat away their foundation, such as soil erosion. In contrast, small systems are adaptable to shifting baselines but are acutely vulnerable to large perturbations. But unlike the first farmer-hunter-gatherers who could move around when their soil was used up, a global civilization cannot.”
― David R. Montgomery, Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations

“re: the US agriculture industry: " This puts us in the odd position of consuming fossil fuels --geologically one of the rarest and most useful resources ever discovered-- to provide a substitute for dirt --the cheapest and most widely available agricultural input imaginable.”
― David R. Montgomery

“…many currently profitable conventional farming methods would become uneconomical if their true costs were incorporated into market pricing. Direct financial subsidies, and failure to include costs of depleting soil fertility and exporting pollutants, continue to encourage practices that degrade the land”
― David R. Montgomery

“People tend to assume that organic farming and sustainability go hand in hand. But that's not necessarily the case - and it hasn't been for most of history. While going organic has some big advantages, even today most organic farmers still rely on the plow - the chief culprit in the this story. Why? Because it provides cheap, reliable weed suppression." David Montgomery - Growing a Revolution”
― David R. Montgomery, Growing a Revolution: Bringing Our Soil Back to Life

“With rare exceptions, the fields of all countries have been made to bear their crops without the least reference to the interests of future generations.”
― David R. Montgomery, Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations

“One of the more interesting things I learned from my first job as a foundation inspector was that preparing a building site means carting the topsoil off to a landfill. Sometimes the fine topsoil was sold as fill for use in other projects. Completely paved, Silicon Valley won't feed anyone again for the foreseeable future.”
― David R. Montgomery, Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations

“In many ways, soil degradation set the long-wavelenght pattern of history, as wars, natural disasters, and climate shifts pulled the trigger on environmental guns loaded by soil loss and degradation.”
― David R. Montgomery, Growing a Revolution: Bringing Our Soil Back to Life

“Across the board, dietary advice typically focuses on what and how much to eat, with remarkably little attention paid to how farming practices influence the nutritional quality of food and whether the “right foods” pack the nutrients they once had.”
― David R. Montgomery, What Your Food Ate: How to Restore Our Land and Reclaim Our Health

“Plants themselves deliver glyphosate to their microbial helpers, as was found in soybeans that exuded the herbicide from their roots for several weeks after being sprayed. Delivering a broad-spectrum antibiotic to the rhizosphere—the home for microbial communities that provide nutrients to plants and keep pathogens at bay—is not exactly a recipe for improving soil health, crop health, or the nutrient density of food.”
― David R. Montgomery, What Your Food Ate: How to Restore Our Land and Reclaim Our Health

“Irish exports to England increased. The British Army helped enforce contracts as landlords shipped almost half a million Irish pigs to England at the peak of the famine in 1846.”
― David R. Montgomery, Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations

“With just a couple feet of soil standing between prosperity and desolation, civilizations that plow through their soil vanish.”
― David R. Montgomery, Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations