As people flock to urban centers where ground space is limited, cities with green walls and roofs and skyscraper farms offer improved health and well-being, renewable resources, reliable food supply, and relief to the environment.

Learning about factory farms and their horrendous treatment of animals is what made me become vegetarian in the first place. I also support the education of the public on adopting pets from animal shelters or saving homeless animals off the street in lieu of buying them from pet shops.

When the FDA announced its intentions to join other countries and ban quinolone use on U.S. chicken farms, the drug manufacturer Bayer initiated legal action that successfully delayed the process for five years.

Shrimp farms are a scourge on the earth, frankly, from an environmental point of view. They pour huge amounts of pollutants into the ocean. They also pollute their next-door neighbors.

Family farms and small businesses are the backbone of our communities.

My father instilled in me an attitude that you couldn't really enjoy yourself unless you had done something to deserve it. So, my childhood was spent working on farms or local shops or, when I got older, in banks.

A farm includes the passion of the farmer's heart, the interest of the farm's customers, the biological activity in the soil, the pleasantness of the air about the farm -- it's everything touching, emanating from, and supplying that piece of landscape. A farm is virtually a living organism. The tragedy of our time is that cultural philosophies and market realities are squeezing life's vitality out of most farms. And that is why the average farmer is now 60 years old. Serfdom just doesn't attract the best and brightest.

My brother Jim and I spent many wonderful summers working on dairy farms in Wisconsin owned by Mom's cousins and as members of our local Boy Scout troop.

Close contact between science and the practice of collective farms and State farms creates inexhaustible opportunities for the development of theoretical knowledge enabling us to learn ever more and more about the nature of living bodies and the soil.

After spending time with the rescued turkeys at Farm Sanctuary's shelter and seeing how similar they are to my furry companion animals at home I knew I needed to do everything in my power to protect these friendly and curious birds from the daily pain and suffering they endure on factory farms.

For at the same time many people seem eager to extend the circle of our moral consideration to animals in our factory farms and laboratories we are inflicting more suffering on more animals than at any time in history.

The American people know what's necessary to get this economy moving again. It's fiscal discipline in Washington D.C. and across-the-board tax relief for working families small businesses and family farms.

I think one thing that kids who grow up on farms really have going for them is they have exposure to death and birth in a totally different way. I think it takes away a little bit of the mystery and a little bit of the fear and I do wish I had that. And I wish I was able to grow my own food.

Family farms and small businesses are the backbone of our communities.