[OFB Cafe] Hicks and City Slickehs

[Chris Olson]

From: Derek Broughton 
Sent: Friday, July 18, 2008 8:59 AM
To: An Open Discussion Forum on Just About Everything,Especially for Techies. 
Subject: Re: [OFB Cafe] Hicks and City Slickehs


> otoh, I can't see how you've done anything but transfer the consumer society 
> to the boondocks.

The problem, as I see it, is that the planet is overpopulated.  World grain demand has exceeded harvest in 11 out of the last 12 years.  The result is that world grain reserves are at a historic low and we have foot riots in third world countries and hundreds of thousands die from starvation every year.  Our agricultural practices are unsustainable long-term.  All it takes is a crop failure, and not even nation-wide, in Brazil, the US or China, and grain futures skyrocket higher than the orbit of Pluto where they are now.

Food, because of energy prices, is going to get so expensive in this upcoming year that even US families are going to feel the pinch.  For pete's sake, Derek, when we bought our farm two years ago a bushel of soybeans was around $5.12/bushel.  My wife and I hauled 15 semi loads of non-GMO soybeans (13,995 bushels) from last fall's harvest to Dakota Bulk in South St. Paul in the last two weeks.  We got the check from Sunrich, Inc - the exporter that bought them for export to China - today in the mail - $273,322.35 for those 15 semi loads of soybeans.  US soybean processors can't afford to pay $19 a bushel for soybeans, but the Chinese can.

So the well-off are going to be able to afford to eat while the poor countries, who the US has traditionally helped out on a gratis basis, are going to starve because farmers are no longer participating in government subsidy programs - instead of selling our grain to the government stockpiles in return for a subsidy, we're selling it to the highest bidder on CBOT and the Minneapolis Grain Exchange, which the US government can no longer compete with.

She's gonna' get worse before it gets better.  Way worse.  And the only thing that's going to make it better in the long run is a massive die-off of a good portion of the world's population because the agricultural practices in use today, to get the yields necessary to feed the world population, are not long-term sustainable.  One of the biggest problems is a shortage of water.  The Chinese have raped millions of acres of farmland by initiating irrigation projects that failed when the ground water ran out - what used to be marginal farmland is now desert.  They have the money to import commodities from the US, but here in the US hundreds of thousands of acres of irrigated farmland in the southwest have reverted to desert as the City of Los Angeles, which doesn't have enough water to sustain its population, has bought up water rights from irrigation wells that used to feed farmland.

I'm all for a big earthquake dropping the whole state of California right off the edge of the continent and killing off how ever many millions of people live in the state.  Same with the east coast - I'm all for a big tidal wave coming in and kill 'em all.  These large metropolitan areas have come to contribute little to the long term survival of mankind.  We're raping this planet to support their way of life.

Hanging on the wall of my office in my farm shop I have a poster that says on it:
"Man, despite his artistic pretentions, and his sophistication and many accomplishments, still owes his very existence to a six-inch layer of topsoil and the fact that it rains......."

Not many City Slickehs realize this or even think about it.  They think food comes from a supermarket or deli and they have no clue what it takes to get it there.
--
Chris