Richard Manning > Quotes

“What was invented with civilization was the ability of some to deny sensuality to others.”
― Richard Manning, Against the Grain: How Agriculture Has Hijacked Civilization

“Famine was the mark of a maturing agricultural society, the very badge of civilization.”
― Richard Manning, Against the Grain: How Agriculture Has Hijacked Civilization

“A thirty-two-ounce soda and a tank of gas is America distilled to its seminal fluids.”
― Richard Manning, Against the Grain: How Agriculture Has Hijacked Civilization

“The British custom of taking tea as an afternoon break has more to do with sugar than with tea. During the nineteenth century, when the custom arose, it was something like the coffee break in modern workplaces, but not so leisurely: a chance to gulp a quick cup of tea, which was invariably laced with sugar. In this way were the human machines of the factory “nourished”—fueled—without even needing to leave their machines.”
― Richard Manning, Against the Grain: How Agriculture Has Hijacked Civilization

“Between 1970 and 1992, a million farms—36 percent of all American farms—ceased to exist.”
― Richard Manning, Against the Grain: How Agriculture Has Hijacked Civilization

“The predominant system of farming bolstered by all of this is accurately named industrial agriculture. It is capital-intensive, not labor-intensive, which largely explains the region’s depopulation. Industrial agriculture considers the countryside as a factory.”
― Richard Manning, Against the Grain: How Agriculture Has Hijacked Civilization

“We are beginning to understand that by the time the conquistadors struck the Andes or Custer reached the Black Hills of South Dakota, only shadow populations of natives remained. The Indian wars got the headlines, but they were mopping-up operations. The shock troops were diseases, especially smallpox, aided by weeds and a few other members of catastrophic agriculture’s evolved coalition.”
― Richard Manning, Against the Grain: How Agriculture Has Hijacked Civilization

“In other words, a bunch of guys who spent their time running around the woods, hunting and fishing and trading meat for sex, one day saw someone hoeing weeds and said to themselves, “What a fine idea! Let’s go do that instead,” Is it possible that the technology did not spread entirely by adoption, that hunter-gatherers were wiped out or displaced by an advancing agricultural imperialism? The record suggests that although some adoption did occur, by and large farming spread by genocide.”
― Richard Manning, Against the Grain: How Agriculture Has Hijacked Civilization