We wouldn't think of going to our doctor and saying 'Treat me the way doctors treated people in the 19th Century', and yet that's what we're demanding in food production.
Interpretation
We should not cling to outdated practices in food production just as we wouldn’t want outdated medical treatments.
Nina Fedoroff's quote highlights the inconsistency in our expectations of food production versus medical practices. While we eagerly embrace advancements in medicine, we often resist changes in the way our food is produced, clinging to outdated methods that may not serve us well in the modern context. The comparison draws attention to the necessity for innovation and progress in agricultural practices, just as we have seen in healthcare.
In practice
During a seminar on agricultural practices, this quote can be used to emphasize the need for modern methods.
When we have any function, whether it's language or vision or cognitive functions like memory, we aren't dealing with a straight line to the brain that says 'This is what I do.' The brain builds a network of connections, a network of neurons that have a particular role in that function.
A scientist is as weak and human as any man, but the pursuit of science may ennoble him even against his will.
Scientists surely have a special responsibility. It is their ideas that form the basis of new technology. They should not be indifferent to the fruits of their ideas. They should forgo experiments that are risky or unethical.
How many more years I shall be able to work on the problem I do not know; I hope, as long as I live. There can be no thought of finishing, for 'aiming at the stars' both literally and figuratively, is a problem to occupy generations, so that no matter how much progress one makes, there is always the thrill of just beginning.
Science fiction [is] the kind of writing that prepares us for the necessary mutations brought about in society from an ever changing technological world and as a result. The mainstream hasn’t excluded SF; the mainstream has excluded itself. No one told Jules Verne he was a science fiction writer, but he invented the 20th century.
When Kepler found his long-cherished belief did not agree with the most precise observation, he accepted the uncomfortable fact. He preferred the hard truth to his dearest illusions, that is the heart of science.
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