Will Harris > Quotes

“got to the end of the string and discovered that on the relentless quest for efficiency, I had given up resiliency, something much, much more important. The inconvenient truth is that efficiency and resilience are almost mutually exclusive.”
― Will Harris, A Bold Return to Giving a Damn: One Farm, Six Generations, and the Future of Food

“It’s so obvious to me what a horribly destructive direction we are headed in; I scratch my head about why it’s not as obvious to everyone else. I guess it’s because our entire economy and society incentivizes all of us, including me, not to take the thirty-thousand-foot-view. We expect to have infinite energy from fossil fuels, and AC on demand, and full tanks of gas in our cars, and cheap food, and a million different jobs that in one way or another depend on extracting from nature’s reserves, but we lack comprehension of what it took to put them there or how fragile the cucles that made them can be.”
― Will Harris, A Bold Return to Giving a Damn: One Farm, Six Generations, and the Future of Food

“Here is what I know now, unshakably and unequivocally: If you will just sit still and shut up and pay attention, nature will teel you everything you need to know. She will provide you with everything you need to make your farm work. Nature knows everything, forgets nothing, and bats last.”
― Will Harris, A Bold Return to Giving a Damn: One Farm, Six Generations, and the Future of Food

“Cultivating food using the modern industrial system is like pissing your pants to stay warm. It’s okay in the very short term but a terrible strategy for the long term.”
― Will Harris, A Bold Return to Giving a Damn: One Farm, Six Generations, and the Future of Food

“I got to the end of the string [of industrial farming] and discovered that on the relentless quest of efficiency, I had given up resiliency, something much, much more important. The inconvenient truth is that efficiency and resilience are almost mutually exclusive. The more you strive for efficiency, the less resilience you’ll have.”
― Will Harris, A Bold Return to Giving a Damn: One Farm, Six Generations, and the Future of Food

“Even with all our big-hatted efforts to outwit [nature] and improve on her, humans are unworthy opponents. We [can] talk a big game and use the latest technology to try to override her rhythms or better her output, but really, from nature’s perspective, we will always be a fart in a hurricane”
― Will Harris, A Bold Return to Giving a Damn: One Farm, Six Generations, and the Future of Food

“life is 10% what happens to you, and 90% how your respond to it. The choice is yours and all the best in the recovery journey”
― Will Harris, Anger Management: Bite Your Tongue - The Ultimate Anger Management Guide for Men and Women to Control Your Life Again

“The food that came out of the [industrialized] system was artifically cheap - the price was subsidized by the environment, our wildlife and aquatic life, and our bad health. We just couldn’t see those hidden costs - nor could we grasp how future generations would inherit the effects of our extractive, intensive farming methods. When you add up all the ways the bill is coming due, it takes the shine off the glittering promises of postwar industrialized food. The deal we made with our planet, its creatures, and our rural workforces, all so we could enjoy a slightly cheaper hamburger, might just be the worst deal that was ever made.”
― Will Harris, A Bold Return to Giving a Damn: One Farm, Six Generations, and the Future of Food