Cary Fowler Quotes

#1. Whether we consciously realize it or not, the biodiversity with which we are most familiar, and the biodiversity with which we have most intimate historical, cultural and biological connections, is that associated with food plants.

Cary Fowler

#2. I'm not talking about losing [agricultural] diversity in the same way that you lose your car keys. I'm talking about losing it in the same way that we lost the dinosaurs: actually losing it, never to be seen again.

Cary Fowler

#3. The drive behind what I do is really to make sure that people don't go to bed hungry. It's not just that I have a love of diversity, it's the importance of the uses of that diversity.

Cary Fowler

#4. Perhaps it matters little whether the international community chooses to celebrate crop diversity, but it profoundly matters that the international community takes action to conserve it.

Cary Fowler

#5. At the Global Crop Diversity Trust, we work to conserve the diversity that will allow the adaptation and evolution of our agricultural crops in the context of climate change and other challenges.

Cary Fowler

#6. Most of us take seeds for granted. The fate of human kind is resting on these genetic
resources: Seeds. So nothing could be more important.

Cary Fowler

#7. In the game of life, less diversity means fewer options for change. Wild or domesticated, panda or pea, adaptation is the requirement for survival.

Cary Fowler

#8. Agriculture is in danger. The whole world is in danger. We need to learn to adapt. If we
don't, we'll face catastrophic consequence on a scale you cannot imagine.

Cary Fowler

#9. I first went into social services, and when I did my Ph.D. I looked at intellectual diversity rights as they apply to biological material. At the time, I never thought of what I'm doing now as a career. I thought I wouldn't find employment doing this.

Cary Fowler

#10. The coldest growing seasons of the future [will be] hotter than the hottest of the past. Is agriculture adapted to that? I don't know. Can fish play the piano?

Cary Fowler

#11. To begin with, I've always known that I was a little bit different. And, I have a lot of relatives who own farms. I grew up in the American South where political issues and issues of justice were at the forefront. What I do now is a combination of all these factors.

Cary Fowler

#12. You don't look in the eyes of a carrot seed quite in the way you do a panda bear, but it's very important diversity.

Cary Fowler