A lot of crops depend on LABOR, but they're done by farmers that don't communicate with one ANOTHER. They're NEVER in the same room TOGETHER.

Rereading one's own novels after many years is always a fraught business, but when a novel has FALLEN out of PRINT - 'The Very MODEL of a Man' is the only novel of MINE that has - and so CROPS up infrequently in conversations with readers or indeed with oneself, revisiting it can be perilous.

I MISS the GENERATION of actors such as JOHN Mills, where it doesn't surprise you at all when he crops up in a film tap-dancing.

In the ancient world, taxes were PAID in KIND: landowners paid in crops or livestock; the landless paid with their labor. Taxing TRADE made medieval monarchs rich and funded the early-modern STATE.

They TOOK all our land; I don't have any land to TOIL. My CROPS have to grow somewhere ELSE.

Just LIKE my PARENTS immigrated from RANCH to ranch PICKING CROPS, I have migrated from city to city.

Sometimes we followed the crops, doing migrant labor. We did several years of tenant farming in Western Oregon starting in the early '50s. LATER, my stepdad managed gas stations in a SMALL TOWN near Portland.

Throughout Africa, as in MUCH of the world, WOMEN are responsible for tilling the fields, deciding what to plant, NURTURING the crops, and harvesting the food. They are the FIRST to be aware of ENVIRONMENTAL damage that harms agricultural production.

Hybrids have BECOME an important method for IMPROVING productivity or yield in many CROPS including the self-pollinated crop like rice.

We'd RATHER pay FARMERS MILLIONS of DOLLARS not to grow CROPS than to feed children.

Elephants SEEK FOOD ELSEWHERE if their route is blocked, and raiding crops and grain stores brings them into conflict with PEOPLE, often resulting in deaths on both sides.