Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I am pleased to help recognize the 150th birthday of the United States Department of Agriculture--USDA. As a member of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry as well as the Committee on Foreign Relations, I understand the importance of agriculture to feeding our Nation and feeding the world. One hundred and fifty years ago today President Abraham Lincoln signed the legislation creating the Department of Agriculture. This was followed in short order by the Homestead Act and then the Morrill Act establishing our great land grant college system, including The Pennsylvania State University. I suspect that few Americans at the time would have imagined that President Lincoln's leadership and vision in the area of agriculture would have such a profound impact on our country and the world. Just recently, Dr. Rajiv Shah, the Administrator of the Agency for International Development said that the single-most effective way to eliminate world poverty was to increase agriculture yields. That is an extraordinary statement. It means that Penn State and the other agriculture research universities have a critical role to play in eliminating hunger, assisting in global food security and political stability. The world's population just passed seven billion people and is on the way to nine billion people by 2050. This means we must double world food production by 2050 in order to meet the challenge of feeding this increased population.…”