Feeding Our Hungry World

Part II

Fisherman on Inle Lake, Myanmar/Burma

Afghanistan

The sea’s our field of harvest,
Its scaly tribes our grain;
We’ll reap the teeming waters
As at home they reap the plain.
- John Greenleaf Whittier

Pago, Myanmar/Burma

Barley Fields, Kandze, Tibet

Rice paddies, Tibet

Tawi-Tawi, Philippines

Goa, Western India 

Cultivating Potatoes, Bamiyan, Afghanistan 

Weligama, Sri Lanka

It is estimated that 20% of the world’s population depend upon fish for their survival.

Half of the world depends on rice.

Myanmar/Burma

Sri Lanka 

The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous
and the storm terrible,
but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore.
- Vincent Van Gogh

 

India 

Cambodia 

Japan

Mali 

Philippines 

The sea is everything. It covers seven tenths of the
terrestrial globe.  Its breath is pure and healthy.
It is an immense desert, where man is never lonely,
for he feels life stirring on all sides.
- Jules Verne

Sri Lanka

Dal Lake, Srinigar, Kashmir 

Burma/Myanmar

In 40 years, the global population is expected to swell by
2 billion, so rice, today the fastest growing staple which
feeds more than half the world’s population, will become
increasingly important to global food security.
- Pamela Whitby, BBC, The Race for Rice, 2011

Rice paddy fields, Banaue, Philippines 

Nepal

The first farmer was the first person.
All historic nobility rests on the possession and
use of land.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Rice paddies, Thailand

Rice has fed more people over a longer period of time
than has any other crop in human history.
Rice: Then and Now”
by R.E. Huke and E.H. Huke

Java, Indonesia
Woman working in a field devastated by volcanic debris and flood waters

Farmer, Baluchistan, Pakistan

Nepal 

Give fools their gold, and knaves their power;
let fortune’s bubbles rise and fall;
who sows a field, or trains a flower,
or plants a tree, is more than all.
- John Greenleaf Whittier

Niger

Bamiyan, Afghanistan

Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens.
They are the most vigorous, the most independant, the
most virtuous, and they are tied to their country
and wedded to its liberty and interests by the most lasting bands.
- Thomas Jefferson

Pakistan

Luzon, Philippines

Shibam, Wadi Hadhramaut, Yemen

Afghanistan

Lancaster, Pennsylvania 

The Amish farm as they have for hundreds
of years.  They believe that working with the soil,
raising livestock, and growing their own food is
cooperating with God’s purposes.

The bounty of harvests in Kashmir 

Agra, India

Niger 

The Farmer

Each day I go into the fields

to see what is growing

and what remains to be done.

It is always the same thing: nothing

is growing, everything needs to be done.

Plow, harrow, disc, water, pray

till my bones ache and hands rub

blood-raw with honest labor—

all that grows is the slow

intransigent intensity of need.

I have sown my seed on soil

guaranteed by poverty to fail.

But I don’t complain—except

to passersby who ask me why

I work such barren earth.

They would not understand me

if I stooped to lift a rock

and hold it like a child, or laughed,

or told them it is their poverty

I labor to relieve. For them,

I complain. A farmer of dreams

knows how to pretend. A farmer of dreams

knows what it means to be patient.

Each day I go into the fields.
- W.D. Ehrhart

All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance
and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

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Sentinels of the Earth

 

The tree is a slow, enduring force straining to win the sky.
- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Wisdom of the Sands,
translated from French by Stuart Gilbert

Chinar Trees, Kashmir

If you would know strength and patience,
welcome the company of trees. 
- Hal Borland

Ayutthaya, Thailand

Cambodia

I hear the wind among the trees
Playing the celestial symphonies;
I see the branches downward bent,
Like keys of some great instrument.
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

India

Thailand

Trees are poems that earth writes upon the sky
- Khalil Gibran

India

Every green tree is far more glorious than if it were made of
gold and silver.
- Martin Luther

France

Agra, India

Trees are the earth’s endless effort to speak to the
listening heaven. 
- Rabindranath Tagore,
Fireflies, 1928

Cambodia

Trees are much like human beings and
enjoy each other’s company.
- Jens Jensen, Siftings, 1939

Canada

It is not so much for its beauty that the forest makes a
claim upon men’s hearts, as for that subtle something,
that quality of air that emanation from old trees,
that so wonderfully changes and renews a weary spirit.
-  Robert Louis Stevenson

Korea

Niger

I never saw a discontented tree.
They grip the ground as though they liked it, and
though fast rooted they travel about as far as we do.
They go wandering forth in all directions with every wind,
going and coming like ourselves,
traveling with us around the
sun two million miles a day,
and through space heaven knows how
fast and far!
-  John Muir

Grand Canyon, Arizona

And see the peaceful trees extend
their myriad leaves in leisured dance
they bear the weight of sky and cloud
upon the fountain of their veins
- Kathleen Raine, Collected Poems

The Sahel

Nepal

  Planting trees early in spring,
we make a place for birds to sing in time to come.
How do we know? They are singing here now.
There is no other guarantee that singing will ever be.
- Wendell Berry

Thailand

Cambodia

Believe one who knows
You will find something greater in woods than books.
Trees and stones will teach you
that which you can never learn from masters
- Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153)  

Morocco

Cambodia

Dust Storm, Rajasthan, India

A few minutes ago every tree was excited,
bowing to the roaring storm, waving, swirling,
tossing their branches in glorious enthusiasm
like worship. But though to the outer ear these trees are now silent,
their songs never cease.
Every hidden cell is throbbing with music and life,
every fiber thrilling like  harp strings, while incense is ever flowing
from the balsam bells and leaves.
No wonder the hills and groves were God’s first temples…
- John Muir

Italy

Trees, proud standing people
stretching fingertips to the sky, reaching, praying
glorious attention, breathing light.
strength
shelter
timeless confidence
bending and firm
comforting
rooted chorus line
dancing with the moon, the wind, the clouds
framing bursts of stars
tender rugged celebration
absorbing and releasing life
each holy branch holding
the power of the Universe.
There.
-  Wallace Stevens