Farmer/consumer Ratio
In the U.S. of the 1930s, one farmer fed only himself and three other consumers. The same farmer now feeds well over a hundred people. However, some authors consider this estimate as flawed as it does not take into account that farming requires energy and many other resources which have to be provided by additional workers, so that the ratio is actually larger.
Read more about this topic: Farmer
Famous quotes containing the words farmer, consumer and/or ratio:
“Well, farmers never have made money. I don’t believe we can do much about it. But of course we will have to seem to be doing something; do the best we can and without much hope. The life of the farmer has its compensations but it has always been one of hardship.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)
“The so-called consumer society and the politics of corporate capitalism have created a second nature of man which ties him libidinally and aggressively to the commodity form. The need for possessing, consuming, handling and constantly renewing the gadgets, devices, instruments, engines, offered to and imposed upon the people, for using these wares even at the danger of one’s own destruction, has become a “biological” need.”
—Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979)
“People are lucky and unlucky not according to what they get absolutely, but according to the ratio between what they get and what they have been led to expect.”
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)